James Wallace Harris offers a Science Fiction Short Stories State of the Union in which he praises the many ways to read SF/F short stories through distribution methods which once would have been seen as mere science fiction. He signals out for praise Escape Pod for offering free podcast readings of short stories and Fictionwise for offering e-book versions of top SF/F magazines like Analog and Asimov's (and I should add that one of my favorite SF/F magazines, Interzone, is now available on Fictionwise).

Harris adds that SF/F short stories are what "really defines the science fiction genre in my mind. I don’t have time to keep up with SF novels, and to be honest, they seldom offer the punch as they did when I was a teenager. The short story is different, it still has sense of wonder value and presents far out visions from writers who are working with the rule that the sky is no limit."