The 10 Best Blogs to Follow If You Love Science Fiction and Fantasy

Every once in a while I like to google questions like “what are the best blogs to follow if you’re a huge fan of [fill in the blank]”?

Google will give you hundreds of hits when you search for something like this, but there are a lot of gems out there that are easy to overlook if you’re not willing to scroll through dozens of pages of results. Sometimes they might not even show up at all depending on what keywords you use!

This post is the beginning of a series I’ll be doing on the topic of small(er) sites that deserve much more praise than they’re currently getting. I won’t be numbering my posts because I have no idea how many posts will eventually be included in this category. All of them will be tagged with Best of Lists…, though, so that new readers will be able to scroll through all of them in the future and hopefully find some great new sites to visit.

Today I will be talking about the 10 best sci-fi and fantasy blogs that you might not have heard of yet but should definitely be checking out.

Surreal Situations

This is a  whimsical comic strip by my friend Michael Mock about a small group of action figures trying to survive in a world that is overrun with zombies.

What I like the most about it is how many funny moments Michael has managed to fit into a storyline that’s quite serious overall. He’s good at making me smile one minute and gasp the next.

The first panel of the first strip in this series is on the left.

 

The Setup Wizard.

Okay, so I thought that everyone had already heard of this blog, but every time I mention I meet at least one person who has no idea what I’m talking about. I am including it here to make sure that every fan of Harry Potter and/or tech support culture has had a chance to read it.

Imagine being a muggle who has been hired by Hogwarts to provide IT support. You had no idea that wizards exist, and they still don’t know how the hell the Internet works.

Nearly everything that could go wrong with such an arrangement has gone wrong so far, from students pulling pranks to all kinds of magical creatures wreaking havoc on muggle technology. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

 

Queer Sci Fi

I’ve read a lot of Queer science fiction that I happened to stumble upon over the years, but until recently I didn’t know there was a specific place for talking about this specific corner of the sci-fi market.

This site has everything from book reviews to interviews to discussion groups that are always open to new members. Now that I know it exists, I am really looking forward to finding some great new reads over there.

 

Biology in Science Fiction 

One of the rules I made for myself when I started working on this post was that every site I linked to needed to have been updated at least once since the beginning of 2017.

Well, I just broke that rule. I’ve been reading the old posts and am fascinated by all of the scientific explanations for how certain science fiction and fantasy creatures would actually behave, live, breed, and die.

And who knows? Maybe there’s a slim chance the author will notice that their blog is still getting attention and decide to start updating it again!

 

Could This Happen? 

This is similar to Biology in Science Fiction except that it’s about the science of speculative fiction in general.

It’s been a long time since I took any science classes, so I often wonder if the chemistry, physics, geology, zoology, or botany in a story is anywhere close to how things would really be if that kind of spaceship/ecosystem/device/planet really existed.

The fact that there’s a site dedicated to answering these questions makes me happy.

 

Tobias Buckell

I’ve never met Tobias, although he is friends with a couple of my extended family members. What I like the most about his blog is how much of his own personality and interests he adds to it.

I love it when people – and especially authors –  mix science fiction in with whatever else they enjoy in their lives. It gives you such a well-rounded understanding of who they are as people.

 

Black Girls Create

I still haven’t had a chance to explore all of the links on this site, but Hogwarts BSU is my favourite part of it so far if you’re going to make me pick only one section to begin with.

Be sure to give yourself a lot of time to look around when you visit. There are so many different sections that you’ll want to make sure you get a good look at everything.

 

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy 

This is another one of those blogs that I only recent discovered. It seem to be a mishmash of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. I’m assuming that’s because Canada is a much smaller country than the U.S., so our speculative community is also smaller.

I really like seeing everything kept together, though. It’s introduced me to some titles that I almost certainly wouldn’t have otherwise heard of.

 

Good Show Sir

This blog shows nothing but terrible science fiction and fantasy book covers from many different eras.

My first impulse when I see a cover like that in many circumstances is to read the blurb. It would take a much worse set of cover art than most of the things I’ve seen on this site to keep me away entirely, although I will admit to being ocasssionally so turned off by a truly awful cover that I don’t even give the story inside a chance.

With that being said, some wonderful books have awful covers, and some awful books have wonderful covers. You won’t know for sure whether a story appeals to until you take the time to dig a little deeper.

 

Unfridged

Sexism, racism, and other forms of prejudice definitely aren’t new in the sci-fi realm, but times are changing for the better. This site talks about how the SFF community can improve, what sci-fi books and shows are doing a good job at being inclusive, and which ones still need some work.

It’s also one of the funniest sites I’ve come across in a long time.

 

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