One thing that sucks about living so far from North America is how hard it is to pick up magazines and just check them out. While I recently discovered that Realms of Fantasy was being carried (on the shelf) by Whatthebook in Itaewon, I found this a shock: genre fiction mags are pretty much the last thing one can sample in Korea, so you generally have to subscribe to find out what they’re like, or stick to what you know, or read online fiction magazines.

But there’s a new trend of giving magazines away in PDF form, to allow people to sample them. Right now, you can get free issues of two great mags:

Diet Soap is giving away PDFs of issue #3 (which, yes, contains a poem by yours truly, but also lots of other cool stuff).

Shimmer is giving away copies of its issue #10, which not only contains an interview with Cory Doctorow, but also fiction by my pal Caroline Yoachim, and by Shweta Narayan, whose story at Strange Horizons I recently linked.

And if you’re feeling the love, you could also get yourself a copy of Apex Magazine in an array of formats for pretty cheap, too. ($2!) Or subscribe for a year for $12!

Speaking of free, if you think you can read and review on your blog A Mosque Among the Stars — Ahmed A. Khan’s anthology of Islam-flavored SF — he’ll give you a PDF gratis, too!