
Show HN: The first issue of Compelling Science Fiction - mojoe
http://compellingsciencefiction.com/
======
mojoe
Two months ago I posted about a new online science fiction magazine I was
creating:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11151062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11151062)

I'm happy to report that the first issue is now live! I'm looking forward to
hearing your feedback. I will continue to refine the magazine as time goes on,
but I believe we have a great collection of stories for you, which is what we
set out to do.

~~~
personjerry
I asked this on the original thread too but never got an answer, and I ask it
again because I'm not familiar with how publishing works: If I submit a series
of short stories, would I still retain the right to collect them into a book
and have it published elsewhere, like Asimov did with Foundation?

~~~
mojoe
I'm sorry I missed your question the last time around. Yes, you retain the
copyright, I just buy 'first world electronic print rights.' This means that
I'm buying exclusive rights to publish electronically for a period of time (in
this case 6 months) and after that I have non-exclusive publishing rights (so
you can sell or publish reprints any time after 6 months). After 3 years you
have the option of terminating my non-exclusive rights altogether, although
you don't need to to sell your own reprints. I've been told by authors that my
contract is the most author-friendly they've seen (it's based on SFWA's model
magazine contract).

~~~
personjerry
That sounds good, thank you for the thorough answer.

------
3stripe
Love the concept, good sci-fi is hard to come by.

Design thought: the reading experience would be vastly improved by a larger
font size and shorter line length. See [https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-
css/](https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/) or similar for inspiration.

~~~
mojoe
Thanks for the suggestion, I will certainly review the link you sent! I don't
have any volunteers who have front-end design experience, so there is a lot of
room for improvement.

~~~
kbaker
In Firefox, you can click the little book icon to turn on better readability.
(Reader View)

It definitely improves the layout, you can copy that design basically. Smaller
content width, bigger fonts.

Also, thanks for putting this together!!!

~~~
mojoe
Thanks! It's an expensive hobby :)

------
unknownzero
Glad to see all the positive feedback here. I volunteered as a reader/advisor
for this first edition and wanted to take this chance to say the experience
was great. Joe is very respectful of volunteers time, even those of us who
occasionally fall off the grid for a few days ( I still owe you a pic and bio
Joe :) ). I'd encourage anyone on the fence to pick up this edition, there are
some absolutely outstanding stories in there. And I'd also encourage anyone
thinking about volunteering to jump in, it's a great project/maintainer to
work on/with. Here's too many more issues Joe!

~~~
mojoe
Thanks for the kind words! I appreciate your help evaluating stories.

------
kriro
This is a very interesting project. Are you self financing the entire
operation? The "about us" page has some info on your review process. It seems
those are volunteers or are you also paying them? I love the free+payment
optional model and not relying on ads. What's your bigger fear, lack of
quality entries or lack of subscribers?

6c/words seems pretty solid so that's nice. SFWA rights is a good choice as
well, seems like you are pretty author friendly :) How are you handling
authors payments btw. (not an author but curious)?

Sustaining >550 paying customers to break even seems like no small task.

I have looked for similar online magazines with good rights in another domain
(horror) before and your site seems to be ahead of the curve with regards to
seeming professional and transparent, kudos.

~~~
mojoe
Yes, I'm currently self financing everything. All the individuals on the
'about' page are volunteers. You can see a little bit of a finance breakdown
on the 'subscribe' tab
([http://compellingsciencefiction.com/subscribe.html](http://compellingsciencefiction.com/subscribe.html)).

I'm paying authors the old-fashioned way, with checks! Since it's only 5
checks/month, this doesn't seem like something I need to optimize right away.

I appreciate your kind words -- it will be tough to get enough paying
supporters, but hopefully people find the content worthwhile.

------
paulvs
Just read Gaia's Children (~35min) - a great piece. I actually listened to it
in the car on the way to work using iOS's text-to-speech, which was very good
quality.

~~~
paulvs
My opinions so far:

Gaia's Children - 5 stars

Reflection - 4 stars

Mean and Clean - 2 stars

~~~
mojoe
Thanks for the feedback!

Mean and Clean was very controversial before publication -- two advisors
disliked it and two really loved it.

------
IndianAstronaut
Finding hard scifi is so hard. Most of science fiction is purely the realm of
science fantasy.

~~~
personjerry
I think it's a difficult line to draw, typically (except in the case of high
fantasy, like magic). We might find that our understanding of science to be
"wrong" at any point, because science is not as "rigorous" as mathematics. At
one point modern computing with semi-conductors would've been impossible
(classical mechanics), but then we discovered that on microscopic levels
quantum mechanics applies instead, and this allowed computers to the extent
that we have today.[0]

[0] [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/112615/why-is-
it...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/112615/why-is-it-said-that-
without-quantum-mechanics-we-would-not-have-modern-computers)

~~~
eggy
True in some senses, but take 'Interstellar' for instance. I would personally
categorize it as hard science pushing the fringe into fantasy/speculation.
'The Martian' I would consider more hard science fiction overlooking some
technical issues for dramatic effect. In any case, I enjoy SF that is mainly
in the realm of hard SF. I read John Cramer's 'Twistor' years ago, and
although some have panned it for some stereotypes, I loved reading it at the
time. I'll have to revisit it. Professor Cramer is a physics professor at
Univ. of Washington in Seattle.

------
anotherevan
Would you consider publishing an epub format version (either of the individual
stories or altogether for each issue)?

~~~
mojoe
We definitely have an epub version, it can be downloaded right now by patrons
of Compelling Science Fiction on Patreon:
[https://www.patreon.com/compelling](https://www.patreon.com/compelling)

We're currently discussing additional methods of distribution of e-reader
formats. We would like to set up an automated system that emails subscribers
.epub/.mobi versions to their address of choice, but we need to put together
an in-house subscription system first.

~~~
sohkamyung
Would you consider distributing the magazine (including subscriptions) via
Weightless Books [1]? They are also handing lots of other magazines like
Clarkesworld, Locus, NYRSF, etc.

[1] [https://weightlessbooks.com/](https://weightlessbooks.com/)

~~~
mojoe
I would certainly consider it, I'll check out their terms. Thanks for pointing
them out! We want to get our stories out to as many readers as possible, so
we're looking at many different channels.

~~~
fit2rule
Please consider adopting some of the emerging trends in sharing, such as
IPFS.io, too. It would be amazing to know your works are always available
through such a system ..

------
cant_kant
Interesting stories. Better copy editing would make them easier to read.

"Ed had shouted on them like this"

"No real kidnapper hauls around a struggling, scream-seeking captive"

"I see I need to show the adolescent asshole affecting to be me "

Broken sentences like these make the stories a bit of a chore to read.

~~~
mojoe
Thanks for the feedback! We hired a professional copy editor, but we will work
harder in this area going forward.

------
aidenn0
For some reason I've always preferred my Science Fiction in short-story form,
and my Fantasy in novel form, so this is nice. I do regret that in all of my
moving around during college years, I got rid of my print magazines.

------
nicois
hey, why not allow people to supply a Kindle email address so you can push
straight to them? they need to whitelist you as a sender of course..

~~~
mojoe
This is a great idea, and we're currently working on a system that will
accomplish this.

~~~
VLM
Consider becoming a kindle magazine. I subscribe to F+SF and would surely
subscribe. Its mainly a convenience feature, magically new issues appear on my
tablet as they're released and magically you get a predictable monthly cash
flow.

I subscribe to 2600 on my kindle; its clearly not a "giant publishers only
need apply".

~~~
mojoe
Unfortunately Amazon has discontinued "Kindle Publishing for Newspapers &
Magazines Beta". A lot of the small magazines that signed up through that
program were grandfathered in. I've sent a query about other ways to get
periodicals published, but haven't yet heard back.

------
SolaceQuantum
Congratulations on your first issue! I'm curious if you have considered
suggesting people put their experiences working with your magazine on the
Submissions Grinder or Duotrope. I know at least the Submissions Grinder posts
the latest updates on its homepage and it might attract you to more writers.
Also how much have you considered social media in talking to both fans and
authors to keep updates on your magazine, upcoming contests, perhaps a yearly
anthology of 'best hits', etc?

~~~
mojoe
Thanks! I had not considered encouraging authors to post their experiences, I
will look into it.

We are also working on our social media presence. We have a Twitter account
(@CompellingSF) but no Facebook presence yet. We're mostly relying on email
currently, however, and that will continue to be our primary communication
mechanism.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I will note that the Grinder and Duotrope are writer-contributed anyways so
someone will eventually list your magazine there. I only suggest this because
both those sites cater to writers looking for markets to submit work. The more
writers contribute the stronger your magazine looks in terms of writer's
perspective.

Good luck and I hope to look forward to many future releases to come!

------
JD557
Quick nitpick: Could you add a RSS feed? I think it would be a nice
alternative to the mailing list.

~~~
mojoe
I will certainly look in to this.

------
kecks
I thought the default look of the site was a bit hard to read, so I made two
themes for Stylebot. If you have Stylebot installed you can go to the site,
click the Stylebot icon and load either of them from "Stylebot Social".

Stylebot is only available for Chrome though; does anyone know an alternative
to Stylebot which is as user-friendly as Stylebot but also available on a
broad range of browsers?

~~~
mojoe
Nice! I appreciate the effort. Based on feedback here I'll be changing styles
tonight.

------
_greim_
Thanks! I'll be bookmarking this and coming back periodically. FWIW, I used
chrome dev tools to add some page styles, in order to make the stories easier
for me to read.

    
    
        body {
          font-family: georgia;
          font-size: 17px;
          line-height: 2;
          background-color: #F8F9E4;
        }
        p {
          margin: .5em 0;
          text-indent: 1em;
        }

~~~
mojoe
I appreciate the suggestion! I'll be changing the styles this evening.

------
ashitlerferad
Some more sci-fi:

[https://escapepod.org/](https://escapepod.org/)

~~~
rayalez
More hard sci-fi:

[http://rationalfiction.io](http://rationalfiction.io)

~~~
foota
You may want to consider turning off the debug flag in Django as advised here:
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/#debug](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/#debug)

------
cstuder
I always love to get some fresh Science Fiction stories and just pledged my
support on Patreon.

I sincerely hope your stories won't be bland (Haven't read the first issue
yet).

As a longtime Escapepod listener and supported I love how diverse and creative
the stories can get, once you move away from the classical Spaceship &
Lasergun stuff.

~~~
mojoe
feel free to email me with your thoughts at joe@compellingsciencefiction.com!

------
matthewwiese
Awesome stuff and I plan on submitting some stories in future. I am more than
pleased to see you creating a further avenue for writers, and sci-fi in
particular, to get their work into as many eyeballs as possible.

Definitely another thumbs up for paying six cents per word even when you're
just getting your feet off the ground.

~~~
mojoe
I'm passionate about supporting content like this, so I'll be paying for it as
long as I can!

------
irremediable
Any chance I could buy an epub? I'm not sure whether I want to subscribe yet,
but I can't read fiction on a computer screen.

(I'll just download and convert if necessary, but it'd be nicer to pay you for
it.)

~~~
mojoe
I'll email you one this evening, no charge, just send me your email address
(joe@compellingsciencefiction.com)

------
6581
Something I noticed when I bookmarked the site: none of the pages have a
<title> tag.

~~~
mojoe
Thanks for pointing this out! There are a lot of small issues we need to
address (favicons, title tags, better typography, etc).

------
jacobush
The PNG is pretty large. I compressed it with tinypng to a quarter the size.

~~~
mojoe
Thanks for pointing that out -- there are many optimizations that we need to
do.

------
bencollier49
Can we get it in print?

~~~
da4c30ff
Maybe they could add an option to order an on-demand print from a service like
Lulu.com

~~~
bencollier49
Good idea. I'd pay for that.

------
sciguy77
This looks awesome - I'm so excited to read this!

------
llSourcell
stop with the greek name bullshit already. pick another culture's mythology
there are so many out there (hindu, african, persian, etc.) it will help you
be a fresher writer

