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There is an awful lot of
fiction on the Web but sites that deal with it specifically are
infrequent. Most of the time it's found alongside poetry, reviews,
and theory in journals and zines so check them out as
well.
Desert
Island Short Stories 
Why read short stories? If you were cast away on a desert island
which ones would be indispensible reading? Here
are some of the responses received when these questions were posed
in the Reading Conference at the trAce WebBoard.
Digitalfiction:
Fractured
Multimedia site runs like a pop promo, designed for flash users,
follow the journey into the dark side of urban life and human psyche.
A blend of text and moving image, a slant on the prose poetics of
life, the twisted dialogue of suburbia. An interesting work of fiction
with eerie, disturbing sounds. (Review by Andrew Oldfield)
253 Tube Theatre: A Novel For The
Internet About London Underground In Seven Cars And A Crash
Geoff Ryman's Internet novel about 253 passengers on the tube, each
described in 253 words and linked to each other in ways they are
unaware of, attracted a lot of media attention when it first
came online and even more so when the "paper remix" was published.
Ryman says that the experience of the online version is very different
to the book version. The difference is in the links. "With the hyperlinks,"
Ryman says, "253 says subliminally, look at all the hidden ways
we are alike, all the links we have we don't know about. Without
the links you move from a cross channel ferry piano player, to a
BT repairman, to an old lady working part time in Boots. The message
becomes: look at God's infinite variety."
Ame-chan
Pacific rim culture clashes are on the cards in this beautifully
designed site that combines neat graphics with fascinating text.
The story to explore belongs to Ame-chan, a Japanese girl in Australia.
Interestingly, the site works whether you try and impose a linear
storyline on it, or not. That's a rarity and helps layer the appeal.
You will need a shockwave-enabled browser to immerse yourself in
the experience and the time-span impaired will need to curb their
impatience - click off a page too quickly and you'll miss some intriguing
fade-ins of narrative and graphics. It's not one-way traffic, there's
an email address to contact the author.
Angwels
One for fans of dark fantasy and shared worlds. This expanding text-based
site is the product of a bunch of writers from Dublin who spin off
their own story cycles from a common overarching plot. It's usually
very easy to get hopelessly lost in these sorts of projects,
but hypertext sidebars to individual authors, story arcs, and crossover
points in the unfolding fiction help enormously. The range of styles
is wide enough to encourage anyone interested in the genre to stay
and browse awhile.
The Complete
works of William Shakespeare
"I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." Pretty
much what it says really. A good feature, for those of you who want
to drop bardic quotations without the hassle of reading the works,
is the list of famous quotations.
eSCENE - The World's Best
Online Fiction
"eSCENE is a yearly electronic anthology dedicated to providing
one-click access to the Internet's best short fiction and authors.
The stories within are culled from a collection of electronic magazines
('ezines' or 'zines') published on the Net and feature both established
and previously unpublished authors." The site started up in 1994.
Feminist Science Fiction,
Fantasy and Utopia
This is an intelligent overview of how some SF writers have approached
gender issues in their work. It looks at the work of a fair number
of authors and also at feminist revision of mythology.
Manx Fiction
The Manx connection here seems only to be in the editorial address,
rather than the fiction. All genres of fiction are accepted, as
well as poetry and book reviews. The editor intends to try and include
at least one science fiction story per issue. New fiction is featured
(but not paid for), and classics that are out of copyright are also
online - Charles Dicken's "Christmas Carol", Edgar Allen Poe's "The
Cask Of Amontillado", and Ambrose Bierce's "Boarded Window" are
available to download or read onscreen. The new fiction is not as
strong, but email submissions of stories up to 4,000 words are invited.
The editor is willing to look at material that has already been
published in print or on the Web.
Obsession
New fiction - from manic writers, it says here - around the theme
of obsession. Includes contributions from, among others, students
on the MA in Writing at Nottingham Trent University and Story-Bytes, an online story
site. The stories are short enough to read online, even when you're
paying the phone bill for your modem connection, and varied enough
to more than repay the time spent. The design is stylish, as it
should be - the site is the project of a graphic design student
at Derby University.
Orange Prize for fiction
The UK's richest financial literary award, the Orange Prize - open
to any woman writing a novel in English - was the first award to
set-up an official Web site. For 1998, it was expanded under the
editorship of Rachel Holmes. Since then it has become quieter, but
there's plenty of hard information about the winner, the long and
short lists, and biographical details about the authors. In the
months leading up to the June prize it gets lively.
Project Gutenberg
This project aims to get every classic book ever written on to the
Web so people can access them for free. Go there to see what's already
available and to find out more about the project.
Proust Said That
A small zine discussing all things Proustian.
Pure Fiction
A site that tries to address the needs of two related, but distinct
audiences: writers and readers of commerical fiction. There is a
mix of reviews and author interviews mixed in with instructional
articels about writing techniques and links to literary agents on
both sides of the Atlantic.
Quanta
"The online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy publishing since
1989." This is a very popular zine with SF fans. It has been
on extended hiatus, but in 1997 started to call for submissions
again.
Visionary
Tongue
This is the eponymous website of a dark fantasy zine and includes
samples of work that have been published therein. Those featured
online include Graham Joyce, Storm Constantine and Katherine Roberts.
Certainly worth checking out if you're into the Goth side of life
and just in case you were wondering - "No spaceships".
William S Burroughs
There are quite a few Burroughs sites online. This one provides
links to many others as well as details about the man himself and
his work.
Work In Progress: A James Joyce
Website
An information-rich shrine with something for most who have an interest
in one of the seminal 20th century literary figures. Not least are
the RealAudio clips. As well as the Dubliners version of the song
Finnegan's Wake, there's a clip of Joyce reading extracts
from his work of the same name.
Zoetrope
A part-print, part online fiction magazine by Francis Ford Coppola.
Its aim is to provide a new outlet for traditional short-stories
- but with more than half an eye on writing short fiction that translates
to the screen. Besides the Coppola name, the print version has dabbled
with kudos by enrolling guest designers such as David Bowie and
Helmut Newton.
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