Welcome to Air Castle!
We are a place for readers to get free (as in gratĂs) short-fiction magazines. All of the magazines linked to from here are made available free from their publishers. Most are speculative fiction magazines. We do not host any images or magazine files ourselves, we just link to them (as direct downloads). Most magazines are providing PDF files, though some also provide ebook files (epub and the like). If you click on a magazine cover or issue name you will be taken to the source of the downloads on the publisher's website. You can often find more information about the contents of an issue there. If you click on epub, pdf, etc. a download of that file will be initiated.
We absolutely encourage you to use this website as a way to discover magazines. To try things out. Once you find something that you like: please visit their website (click an issue cover) and support them (whether that be by telling a friend about them, submitting a story to them, donating cash or time, or just adding them on social media). Most magazines would love to hear that you like what they do: reach out and say hi!
If you publish a magazine that makes issues available for free as a document (i.e. not a blog, but a single downloadable file) and would like us to "stock" your magazine, reach out to us and request we add your files.
Well-made words from wild places: That’s what each issue of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry holds: 160+ pages of stories, essays, and poems by dozens of writers, in celebration of and in defense of places where there are no roads.
Epic Echoes is a digital magazine that reverberates with the pulse-pounding spirit of vintage pulp fiction while resonating with the modern sensibilities of today's diverse readers. Our publication offers a vibrant symphony of genre-oriented tales, each one a short, sweet echo of the epic narratives that have thrilled readers for generations! From the ghost towns of the Old West to the farthest reaches of space, from the mean streets of crime-ridden cities to the shadowy corners of the supernatural realm, Epic Echoes delivers captivating stories that intrigue and entertain readers while showcasing up-and-coming literary talents!
We are interested in all things fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, surrealist, fabulist, and magical realist. Show off your weird!
The Future Fire is our flagship online magazine, always open to submissions of beautiful and useful short stories and poetry in Social-political and Progressive Speculative Fiction, Feminist SF, Queer SF, Eco SF, World SF and Cyberpunk, and an experiment in and celebration of new writing, published four times a year.
Hearth Stories is a twice yearly fiction magazine. We mostly publish speculative fiction that explores connection, family, relationships, comfort, and the natural world. The stories often take shape as slice of life fiction in a fantasy or medieval-style setting. Our stories are meant to be cozy, quiet, and largely devoid of fast action and high tech settings (we publish stories with technology <= that of the mid-1800's). We like magic, new worlds, deep forests, and stories of home, hearth, caregiving, and companionship.
Welcome to Impossible Worlds; a digital SFF magazine. Here you will find short fiction, comics, poetry, and artwork in Sci-Fi and Fantasy both that have been lovingly curated just for you! Okay, maybe not just for you. We’re allowed to have other readers you know…
LandLocked Magazine is an online literary magazine that considers what it means to explore an unnavigable place and represents our Kansas boundary lines along with those lines we cross in writing. LandLocked seeks writing that is innovative, that pushes beyond the dense thicket of the unexplorable. We accept all genres―speculative, realistic, and those hybrid bodies of works yet to be named. We want new voices, experienced voices, and everything in between. Send us your weird, your reality, your resistance.
Nocturne Magazine strives to publish writers and artists who work primarily in the genre of horror.
Orion’s Belt is a literary speculative-fiction online magazine. We specialize in the strange and poignant and awe-inspiring, stories that have a cosmic scale and intimate personal stakes. [...] While we focus on science-fiction and fantasy, we’re open to slipstream, horror, magic realism, myth retellings, surrealism, superhero stories, and all other fantastical genres and subgenres.
Peasant Magazine is a fantasy and historical fiction literary magazine produced by fantasy author Charles Moffat with the help of volunteers. We prefer stories that are set in a medieval, ancient, or prehistoric setting. Any pre-industrial setting (pre-1750) will do.
Penumbric is an online magazine dedicated to riding that ever-changing edge of new and original fiction and art and sound and everything into tomorrow. To us, this edge is best exemplified by two things: speculative works that look at our world (or other worlds) in new ways, whether that be peering into the future, a look sideways at an alternative or fantastic past or present, or a hard stare into the face of horror or madness (does that sound like old eps of The Twilight Zone? Well, if that's the comparison, I'm fine with that); and a diversity of viewpoints, representing not only multiple cultures but subcultures, exploring issues of race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, and many things I haven't thought of.
Perseid Prophecies is an independent quarterly speculative fiction magazine. Every issue features fiction from a broad range of science fiction and fantasy, including everything from hard SFF, weird fiction, sci-fi tinged horror, and more. Additionally, each issue offers a factual scientific article, unique cover art, and an editorial titled “Raye’s Rant.”
Radon is an award-winning triannual journal publishing prose and poetry relating to science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, and dystopia.
A journal of arts, environment, and spiritual currents. Skipjack Review aims to highlight the Midwest, but our scope is global. These waters are eclectic, baby, sometimes dyslexic, irreverent, and odd, but mom loves it anyway—Mother Nature, that is. And we love her. That’s why everything we publish at Skipjack Review must have within its radar a reeling concern for the natural world. We are a journal about environment in every sense of the word. Beginning at birth, each of us is bound to our environment. From pollution of the earth to pollution of the mind to server farm statistics to gardening on Mars… We’d publish a modernized rendition of War and Peace, follow that up with a pretty haiku about flowers, and the next minute release some weird sci-fi in the vein of Flowers for Algernon—so long as at the heart of each is a deep concern for the world around us.
The Quiet Ones is an annually produced literary magazine featuring short-form quiet horror fiction, author interviews, and special nonfiction features from new and up-and-coming voices in the horror writing community.
The Reach is a magazine of slipstream short fiction. We publish short stories with an element of the fantastic or surreal, explore concepts that are visionary, unreliable, odd or metaphysical, and which cross the boundaries between science-fiction, horror and literary fiction – in short, the fiction of strangeness.
An online press for dark literature.
Waystation is an amateur magazine that seeks to discover, inspire, and publish emerging authors who are enthusiastic about the tradition of 'space opera.' Space opera is a pulp genre of science fiction, known for grand, epic adventures, interstellar empires, and complex character relationships. Set against a vast cosmic backdrop, space operas explore themes of heroism, warfare and militarism, political intrigue, and occasionally elements of cosmic horror, as seen in the Aliens movies or fictional universes such as Warhammer 40k. Classic authors include C.L. Moore (Northwest of Earth stories) Isaac Asimov (Foundation series), E.E. 'Doc' Smith (Lensman series), Leigh Brackett (Sword of Rhiannon), Frank Herbert (Dune series), and Joe Haldeman (Forever War). These works captivate readers with thrilling journeys through the numberless stars, weaving human drama into the sublime vastness of the cosmos. Published by Spiral Tower Press.
Whetstone is an amateur magazine that seeks to discover, inspire, and publish emerging authors who are enthusiastic about the tradition of 'pulp sword and sorcery.' Writers in this tradition include (but are not limited to) the following: Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, David C. Smith, and many more. 'Pulp sword and sorcery' emphasizes active protagonists, supernatural menaces, and preindustrial (mostly ancient and medieval) settings. Some ipulp sword and sorcery' straddles the line between historical and fantasy fiction; at Whetstone, however, we emphatically prefer isecondary world settings,' other worlds liberated from the necessity of historical accuracy. Published by Spiral Tower Press.
Witch House is an amateur magazine that seeks to discover, inspire, and publish emerging horror authors who are enthusiastic about the pulp fiction tradition of a modern gothic literature called 'cosmic horror.' Writers in this tradition include (but are not limited to) the following: Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and many more. “Cosmic horror” emphasizes helpless protagonists, unexplainable monstrous menaces, and fictional occult themes such as forbidden lore and evil conspiracy. Some “cosmic horror” blurs the lines separating mystery/noir, crime fiction, and horror, but it is distinguished by a dramatic deviation from the reality principle. At Witch House, we prefer lyrical, literary, and artful terror of the sublime that unsettles subtly rather than gross-out gore. Published by Spiral Tower Press.
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