Most of you probably already know this, but on the off chance some people here don’t, there’s a massive effort underway to memorialize one of the (and imo THE) best sites for short fiction on the Internet (and on the planet): SCIFICTION. The Sci-Fi Channel recently announced they were pulling the plug on this venue at the end of the year. Writer Dave Schwartz has begun a blog project in which volunteers write an appreciation--as short or long as you want--of a certain story out of the 350 plus new and classic stories published by editor Ellen Datlow over the last five and a half years. The ED SF Project was originally set to end on Dec. 20, but there’s still a fair amount of stories that need appreciators to sign up for them, so that deadline’s been extended. You can browse the list of stories here and sign up in the comments of this post.

Even if you never read SCIFICTION, do yourself and this project a favor and pick something and contribute.

And don’t miss the fabulous appreciations that are being written. It’s truly inspiring to see people come together to celebrate all this great work.

And for anybody who hasn’t read SCIFICTION before and is wondering where to begin, Gwenda posted a personal list of favorites.  People who hate science fiction shouldn’t be scared off, either, because even though they will find some of that sort of stuff there, one of the strengths of the site was its ability to publish stories of all sorts.  Try, for instance, Rick Bowes’s “There’s a Hole in the City” or “The Empire of Ice Cream” by Jeff Ford, two of my favorite stories of the past decade, regardless of genre.

One of the best things about this project is that you will find new great stories in the process. That’s how I found my story to appreciate “Bookstores, Burners and Origami” and now I have a new author to keep track of!

Of course I’ll go post. As a BTW, this sort of entry is what MetaxuCafe represents to all of us writers as a camaraderie of peers (spoken without mind of status, as I’m at the bottom of the totem pole in credentials or talent).