Darker Matter is a brand new online science fiction magazine, with the emphasis on great new writing. The first issue features five unpublished short stories by top SF authors, including 2006 Hugo Award winner David D Levine, Edward M Lerner, Ken Brady, Duncan Long and Bud Sparhawk. It also has the first of a three-part interview series based on long-lost tapes of an unpublished interview with Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, dating back to 1979, when H2G2 was still a minor cult hit.
March 2007 sees the launch of Darker Matter (www.darkermatter.com), a unique online science fiction magazine that focuses on the world’s best new SF short stories.
Setting the standard right from the start, Darker Matter kicks off with a brilliant new story by 2006 Hugo Award winner David D Levine and a fascinating interview feature on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams, based on live tapes that had lain lost and undiscovered for almost 28 years.
The launch issue of the free magazine includes a total of five top-quality pieces of previously unpublished SF writing. There’s even one intriguing story, Tagging, by Ken Brady, that cries out for an immediate reprint in business magazines like Marketing Week, Advertising Age and Adweek.
Darker Matter is edited by Ben Coppin, author of Artificial Intelligence Illuminated and founder of a successful Cambridge AI and Internet search company. “The authors are the heroes of Darker Matter,” says Coppin. “We’ve got some of today’s top SF short story writers offering us great new fiction, just because they want to support a free online magazine that puts quality first.”
Coppin believes the going rates of pay for SF short story writing in the US and Europe are absurdly low. At the moment, Darker Matter’s authors can only be offered the rates they’d get anywhere else, as there is no sponsorship deal or corporate sugar daddy behind the site. “Eventually, we want to be able to offer authors three things — an enthusiastic and discriminating audience, a fast route for getting fresh ideas published and the substantial financial rewards these talented people deserve,” says Coppin. “At the very least, authors of this stature should not have to cross-subsidise their writing. They ought to be able to make a very good living from their stories alone.”
The Darker Matter team believes the time is right for an online science fiction magazine like this to catch on quickly.
“This is fast, punchy, idea-packed SF writing for the MySpace era,” says Coppin.
“If people like what they see and blog about it, digg it, link to it and tell their online networks about it, we think the word will spread like wildfire. Science fiction reputations have always been built by word of mouth and SF and the new ‘social media’ are a perfect fit.”
For further information about the launch of Darker Matter, or to interview founder and editor Ben Coppin, call Ian Shircore.
Contact
Ian Shircore
Darker Matter
https://www.darkermatter.com
