Strange Horizons has been nominated for the Hugo for the last 10 years and has NEVER WON... and it sorely needs to.

A lot of people don't know how important Strange Horizons has been (and continues to be) to our genre’s history...

#StrangeHorizons #SFFHistory #FictionMagazines

Strange Horizons was founded in 2000 by @maryannemohanraj and it did so, so many things differently from what was “normal” at the time. Here are the things almost *nobody* else was doing back then:

1) Publishing diverse voices. Afaik this was not a “thing” back then! SH was sorely, sorely needed and has helped pave the way for every other magazine striving in this direction since.

#DiverseVoices #diversity #inclusivity #DiversityInPublishing #WritingCommunity

2) Publishing as an online magazine. Online magazines were EXTREMELY new & SH was one of the very first. Lots of people thought publishing online was a terrible idea.

SH is, to my knowledge, the only online mag from those first few who’s still publishing — and thus the oldest online mag I believe!

#Publishing #PublishingHistory #GenreHistory

3) Running by donations. A lot of other magazines use Kickstarters, etc now but my strong impression is that they do it bc that’s the funding model that works (which is fine, tbc). Whereas SH’s fundraisers are of a completely different nature.

They’re like NPR, etc — funded by “viewers like you”

They were running fundraisers nearly a decade *before Kickstarter even existed as a company.* They did them homegrown, offering rewards — I participated after I became a SH author!

Now they’ve switched to Kickstarter, which has an infrastructure for it, but, importantly:

4) To my knowledge, Strange Horizons may have been the first genre magazine *ever* to be founded as a nonprofit.

Again, I don’t think for-profit KS’ing is at all bad. I want ALL genre magazines to make $$$!!

But to me, this does make SH’s fundraising of a different nature and a different motive --

I'd guess for-profit mags would be happy to make it w/ subscriptions if possible…the short fiction industry is so broken and I WISH the for-profit magazines were all making bank & their editors could get rich off them!! (that's another thread)

But I don’t think SH even *offers* subscriptions???

They’re a mission-oriented model. And they cannot get rich

In a brilliant robust cash-flush dream SFF world, as a nonprofit they’d roll that $$$ into their mission

They're just a different mold

There are other magazines that are nonprofits now, but afaik Strange Horizons was the first, and was founded that way from the start.

AND they published online AND fundraised as revenue AND had their mission as underrepresented voices —

They’re trailblazers.

Strange Horizons was founded 5 years before Apex (2005), 6 years before Clarkesworld (2006), and 8 years before Tor.com (2008). A full decade before Lightspeed (2010), a decade and a half before Uncanny (2014).

Strange Horizons has pushed forward SO MUCH in the short fiction field.

And are continuing to!

Take their special issues, like the Caribbean issue, the Palestinian issue — Southeast Asia, neurodiversity, wuxia — not just aiming for “diversity” which can often elide and erase the MOST underrepresented authors, but highlighting specificity and culture.