The special equipment that has to be installed to view many fanzines at efanzines.com seems to have originated with a fanzine they listed, Virtual Tucker Hotel.  That's the first one where that problem arose, and it had not existed there prior to starting to exist, nor had it been seen elsewhere.  It seemed to be so effective in shutting the hotel down that it spread forth to other ezines at the site.  A lot of people won't install it, it seems likely.

     There's a tendency to shut down the works at syfy.com.  They began by dropping the fanzine links feature, then they dropped dominion chat-rooms including the author chats.  Then they shut down the magazine they had at the site, and finally they merged Scifi Weekly with another feature and dropped most of the features it had had. Periodically there is a purge coinciding with site revision projects.  Lately membership posting has declined considerably.  There is no sign that the site is considering closing down as a whole, however.

     Realms of Fantasy's site has started coming alive again after the magazine almost died.  They aren't as lively as they have been in the past yet, though.  Their chief guiding spirit has departed from the site.

     James Baen's Universe has been reported closing down.

Send site news here at the editorial address if you are publicizing it.

Contents