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The Internet Review of Science Fiction launched on Wednesday. Interesting stuff.

They're doing a subscription model: content is visible only to subscribers, but the first year's subscription is free. A year from now, they'll start charging $12/year for subscriptions.

They've got a nice eye-pleasing design, and they're the first online magazine I've noticed adopting the notion of indenting paragraphs using CSS. It's a good idea, one I've been meaning to implement; I suspect that (in combination with good leading/line-spacing) that style is a lot more readable to people used to reading printed pages than the usual HTML approach (no indentation, blank lines between paragraphs).

They've also got interesting content:

• In "TaQ Pagh, or Not To Be," David Gardner discusses whether the Klingon claim to Shakespeare (in ST6: The Undiscovered Country) comes from a pro- or anti-colonialist stance. I think Gardner's analysis is very interesting, though I think he missed another way of looking at the question: reading the Klingons as Soviets (the movie came out in 1991, the year the Soviet Union was dismantled), the "in the original Klingon" line can be seen as a joke on the old "We Soviets invented that, you know" business that Chekov used to engage in regularly in TOS episodes.
• M. Garcia's "Peter Jackson and the Denial of the Hero" discusses the Lord of the Rings movies' dismantling of the larger-than-life epic heroism of various characters in the books, and the instatement in its stead of more human and flawed characters. I honestly don't remember the books clearly enough to know whether I agree with Garcia's assessment, but it's an interesting argument, and I do think that one of the big themes of the film version is the quiet heroism of facing extreme danger even though you're scared to do so. "I will take the ring, though I do not know the way." I find that more compelling than any fated Great Epic Heroism, but that may just mean I'm a child of my times.
• bluejack writes about "The Most Interesting Short [Speculative] Fiction of 2003." I haven't read enough of the stories in question to agree or disagree with his comments, and I'm sad to see online publications not included (he draws mostly from the Big Four print prozines), but I'm always pleased to see more critical discussion of short sf.

There's more at the site, too. Worth taking a look.