Strange Horizons

I love how the Strange Horizons editors choose high-quality stories from diverse authors and about diverse experiences. It's so much better to have this great mix of stories, instead of the boring same old, same old. And I love having no-advertisement listener supported free short story readings. Anaea Lay's narration is so-so. It's not bad, and it doesn't get in the way. Every story is read exactly like every other story, though, and it is sometimes hard to focus.

Great site for speculative fiction! And all their stories and poems are available as podcasts.

I’ve listed to Strange Horizons for years, and recently it’s declined. Or maybe the novelty of a fiction podcast has worn off and when compared to others, I’m just less impressed. The stories are sometimes good, sometimes not and there doesn’t seem to be a strong editorial hand. The narration switches between a set of what I assume are volunteers, and it ranges from decent to horrible; sometimes heavily accented, sometimes very poor audio quality. Recently they’ve also started doing narrations in Spanish, which is completely befuddling to me. I mean if they want to do a Spanish language podcast, that’s great, but do a separate podcast; don’t make me download stuff I can’t even understand only to start it and realize I have to delete it. I’ve unsubscribed for now and will come back when and if they get an editorial vision, set narration standards, and provide an English only podcast option.

Sci-fi short stories!