he editors of SF Site have dedicated themselves to covering the best in science fiction and fantasy, and they are doing it every other week with a constant stream of short fiction and novel reviews. The reviews cover a broad spectrum of the unreal, from fantasy to science fiction and from established authors to emerging ones. Each review features an overview of the story, thoughts on its effectiveness, and a sidebar about the author. Science fiction dominates the site's reviews, but fantasy has a healthy showing as well. Horror reviews are a distant third.
Augmenting the book reviews are "new arrival" summaries and book lists. The new arrivals page gives plot synopses, publication information and prices for upcoming books, with updates twice a month. Most of the book lists deal with specific authors, although some deal with particular topics or issues. Each of the lists gives an overview of the featured author or subject, brief reviews of related books, and hyperlinks to official and fan Web sites.
The Editor's Choice section of the site features short fiction reviews by David A. Truesdale, editor of Tangent: The Only Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Fiction Review Magazine. Each Truesdale column tackles one issue of a given SF magazine and gives thumbnail reactions to each of the stories in it. He then breaks out his favorite story as an "Editor's Choice."
SF Site is also the online home to Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact and a number of other science fiction/fantasy Web sites. Rounding out the site are dozens of pages covering links to fan clubs, role-playing and computer games, convention listings and other SF activities.
A generic name but a specific purpose
At first glance, SF Site comes across as strictly a book review site. Fiction reviews dominate the site's front page, with its other sections--such as computer gaming and role-playing games--relegated to a sidebar.
A closer look confirms the first: book reviews are what this site does best. The site's reviews are sharp, intelligent and long enough to give readers a taste of the book without giving away the heart of the story. The reviews' one uniform shortcoming is the lack of any sort of price listing. This information is available in the "new arrivals" summaries, but it's a hassle to have to shuffle over to a separate section for such basic information.
Beyond the reviews, the site offers a huge amount of additional content, most of which is in the form of Web site listings culled from major search engines. Many of these listings have short reviews for specific sites, but for the most part they aren't much different from what readers would find on a good search of Yahoo.
On the design side, the front page is cluttered and overly long, forcing readers to scroll through a hefty collection of reviews. Inside though, the review and listings pages open up nicely. Navigation--via menus at the top and bottom of each page--is simple, and the site map gives readers an excellent overview of what's available.
SF Site's fiction reviews and author interviews will grab readers and keep them coming back, but it needs to expand its other areas beyond Web site listings to achieve its goal of being "the home page for science fiction and fantasy."
