Abandoned Warehouse Press - (http://www.muc.muohio.edu/~awp/awp.html): Marc Sumerak and Jerry Negrelli publish a multi-serial website based on a shared four-color superhero universe. Their heroes parody the "serious" comic industry in a way remeniscent of "The Tick". APW grew out of an Avengers fan-fiction parody that Marc and Jerry started in high school. (21 Nov 97)
Adventure Zine - (http://www.gameworld.com/adv_zine/): An on-line fantasy fiction magazine, rooted in fantasy role-playing games tradition. The stories share one thing in common: all the characters are based on Dungeons & Dragons stereotypes. (06 Nov 96)
The Adventures of Jorge Gonzoles - (http://www.migrantprogrammer.com/): These tongue-in-cheek serial stories revolve around the life of a 21st century migrant computer programmer. Jorge simultaneously tries to avenge the death of his brother, avoid deportation, be a successful computer consultant, and deal with strangeness such as Sentient Paranormal Ameboid Mass (S.P.A.M.) units, Voltronaise Optoneuralgenic devices, biological computers, and time travel. A strange mix. (21 Nov 97)
Alix of Dreams - (http://www.primenet.com/~ciaran/): B. Clifford Shockey posts a marvelous fantasy novel set in medieval France, complete with hypertext support for some of the historical references. Beautifully told, beautifully illustrated: this is a must-see website! Unfortunately, the text is marred by a number of typos and grammatical errors. Minor flaws, perhaps, but glaring against the otherwise high quality of these pages. Even with these blemishes, Alix of Dreams is a wonderful, engrossing tale--it would really shine with some careful editorial polishing. Recommended. (20 Mar 97)
All Rise! - (http://www.allrise.com/): An eclectic mixture of prose & poetry. The most interesting nugget is a hypertext called "Crack Fiction". It's a mix of classic prose from Burroughs, Kerouac, Hesse, Wolfe, and others stirred into a montage and served on a fresh bed of hypertext. This unusual piece makes a great appetizer that leaves you hungry to devour the original stories. (10 August 97)
The Alsop Review - (http://www.hooked.net/~jalsop/index.html): Created by a literary circle from Berkeley, CA, the Alsop Review has accumulated an excellent selection of short stories and poetry from many outstanding writers. Instead of publishing at regular intervals like most e-zines, they eschew deadlines so that ". . . we are perfectly free to bide our time until someone comes along whose work really impresses us." One complaint: they load another of those unstoppable, irritating sound files--though admittedly this one is less irritating than most. (28 Mar 97)
Alsirat - (http://www.best.com/~gazissax/alsirat/index.html): Named after "the razor-edged bridge to Heaven over the chasm of Hell," this literary e-zine publishes horror-related short stories, poetry, interactive adventures, and articles. My favorite tale in the current issue (#11) is Jason Thomas' The Waiting Method, although I'm in the minority according to the reader survey. (13 Oct 97)
American Cybercast - (http://www.amcy.com/): The glitzy outfit responsible for the much-balleyhooed The Spot, a daily web-soap akin to MTV's "The Real World". It's also home to EON-4, a documentary of alien contact in 1995, and The Pyramid, which details the twisted inner workings of a corporate giant. (27 Feb 97)
Anthem - (http://www.tbi.net/~eafichtel/index.htm): A literary e-zine of Americana, featuring poetry, prose, art, and music. EA Fichtel founded Anthem on the conviction that, despite what the press would have us believe, there's more good in America than bad. It's nice to see a break from the darkness, paranoia, and angst that obsesses so much of our cyberculture. Some good stories and very attractive design. (18 Sept 1997)
Aphelion - (http://www.america.net/~vila/newzine.html): A webzine of science fiction and fantasy, successor to the now-defunct "Dragon's Lair" e-zine. A better-than-average effort featuring some promising unpublished authors. They're just getting started, and worth keeping an eye on. One note: Netscape repeatedly returned an "invalid sound file" error when loading the Aphelion home page. (25 Feb 97)
Avalon Worlds - (http://www.avalonworlds.com/en/fictions.html): This site is dedicated to exploration of artistic multimedia on the Web. The feature that drew me in is a richly photo-illustrated and hyperlinked cybernovel called Pangea. The base plot is simple, but there are enough characters and random directions to travel that it can actually get confusing. Overall, this piece is worth seeing. (07 Sept 97)
Azzouni.com - (http://www.azzouni.com): Jody writes mostly poetry, but her website also has a prose section. She's posted an unusual piece called "You can go home again (and so what?)". It's a tough read because pages break in the middle of sentences and the whole story is one long manic paragraph. Readers have to scroll down a hunk of blank space to move forward to the next page of the story--the one bit of sloppy HTML in what is otherwise a well-crafted site. (18 Apr 97)
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