The Web Fiction Canon
A reasonably complete guide to online literature's four main scenes
Last week a couple people asked about the broader web fiction canon, which I alluded to in my posts about Scott Alexander and 17776. There are several comprehensive intros to each individual genre of web fiction, but I’ve never seen the entire “canon” placed in the context of literature as a whole. In the end, I figured we should just put one together right here on Synthesized Sunsets.
The most thorough curator of web fiction that I’ve come across to date is
, who has done a large number of web fiction reviews and surveys right here on Substack. Makin, as well as other power-users of the Homestuck Discord (more on that later), maintains a list of his favorites on the Shills List at recordcrash.com.
I would highly recommend
as a reviewer; few can draw from the same breadth and depth of online experience. However, his reviews are best suited for people who are already pretty deeply immersed in the ecosystem. With this post, I hope to provide readers with a reference to dive into this terminally online world without having to become terminally online yourself.The “Core Four” Scenes of Web Fiction
This post divides web fiction into four main subgenres: rational fiction, /newwave/, web serial fantasy, and interactive fiction. Similar to Spotify genres, these subgenres are primarily grouped not by structural similarity but by audience and scene: who exactly is reading these works, and why are they appealing?
Before getting into the meat of this post, I want to talk a bit about “Internet folklore”. While not strictly capital-L Literature, Internet folklore plays a similar relationship as mythology in the world of speculative fiction. These tales often come from scattered sources that lack their own coherent structure, but Internet writers will build on them to create their own narratives. Web fiction subgenres vary wildly in their reliance on Internet folklore: some don’t expect any such knowledge from the reader, while others require lots of lore to be comprehensible at all.
Internet folklore comes in many forms, but two of the most common categories are creepypastas and fandom. Creepypastas are the digital equivalent of campfire stories: they’re meant to be a little far-fetched, but part of the thrill is not being 100% sure if they are true. The digital environment has much more storytelling potential than the traditional campfire, as they can take advantage of images, videos, and other digital artifacts. And unlike campfire stories, Internet folklore often comes out of the woodwork when you least expect it.
Fandom is a broad term covering the output of the fan communities of various media, particularly obsessive ones. The most relevant kind of fandom output is fanfiction, which is of course fiction set in some preexisting world. Some fanfiction categories, like romantic “ship fiction”, are clearly a bit superfluous for this post, while others are more stylistically ambitious. But even if it is not fanfiction itself, a lot of web fiction requires a general familiarity with fandom and its quirks.
A knowledgable authority on the subject of Internet folklore is
, who writes about this very topic right here on Substack. I would highly recommend her articles if you are curious about the subject. But otherwise, let’s dive into these “core four” web fiction categories and learn what they are all about.Rational Fiction
Rational fiction is a genre of web fiction that is primarily appealing because of the intelligence and creativity of the protagonist and/or the antagonist. These stories are typically subversions of “irrational” genres that have unsatisfying treatments of their implications. In the context of science fiction, you can think of them as fictions that “harden” their original concepts.
I prefer the term rational fiction over rationalist fiction (ratfic), because not every fic in this category is explicitly tied to the rationalist community and rationalism. These terms refer to a specific Internet counterculture and corresponding ideology, which is loosely defined by artificial intelligence, the Bay Area tech world, ethical philosophy, and the pursuit of truth. Rationalism takes an almost religious approach to seeking truth, so most rationalist fiction aims to draw curious readers into the rationalist orbit by highlighting rationalist teachings. But even when a rational fiction is not explicitly rationalist, rationalists often end up being its core demographic.
Despite being a genre with its own stylistic conventions and scene, rational fiction is surprisingly decentralized. The closest thing to a community hub is /r/rational, which has a fairly complete overview of the genre and a list of important works on its wiki. But I would guess that this resource is not particularly well-known to its reader; I personally had never seen it until writing this article.
The most common subgenre of rational fiction is rational fanfiction, which is just fanfiction that explores how various fictional worlds are littered with inconsistencies. Bad rational fanfiction gives off obnoxious /r/atheist vibes, but the best works inject old settings with new life. In many cases, the world of the rational fanfic is much more compelling than the original setting.
The most famous rational fanfiction, fittingly titled Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (HPMOR), does both. It follows a Harry Potter who is extremely well-versed in the scientific method and Bayes’ Theorem, allowing him to exploit the loopholes of the wizarding world in creative and entertaining ways. (As an example, the first thing Harry tries to do is use his family’s fortune to arbitrage off of the fixed exchange rate of wizard currency.) The condescending style of the prose can be grating at times, but for many readers this is part of its charm.
The other core subgenre of rational fiction is antihero web fiction, which drapes a morally gray landscape over a setting that is conventionally black-and-white. These subgenres are not mutually exclusive by any means, but where rational fanfiction hardens the scientific mechanics of its setting, antihero web fiction hardens its ethics. Antihero web fiction usually requires a setting with established clear good-and-evil roles to work— often taking advantage of superheroes or high fantasy roles.
The mother of all antihero web fiction is Worm by Wildbow, a 7000-page superhero epic about the moral quandaries that arise in a world populated by ordinary people who never asked for deadly powers. Worm theorizes that most people would choose “villainy”, so much of the story centers around the slow collapse of a world in which institutionally-backed superheroes are falling behind in numbers. The story is also known for its highly cerebral action sequences, in which the protagonist (and author) try to furiously reason their way out of tough predicaments.
Outside of these larger categories, rational fiction can get weird fast. One particularly novel genre that came out of the rational fanfiction sphere is glowfic, a participatory forum-based genre that I cannot claim to understand. If you’re morbidly curious, you can check out Makin’s article on the matter:
In the end, rational fiction is a surprisingly vital genre that is always reinventing itself. Even if you’re not particularly drawn to the style, it still has a wide range of elements that are quite interesting to consider from a literary perspective.
/newwave/
On the complete opposite side of the counterculture, we have /newwave/, also known as /lit/core. If the seedy, 4chan-adjacent parts of the Internet are unfamiliar to you, you may want to start with the article “How 4chan became the home of the elite reader”. The /lit/ board on 4chan may be unapproachable and unseemly to an outsider, but that early impression belies an impressively high level of discourse.
My understanding of /newwave/ is limited, but
did a great write-up on his Substack . If you have some extra time, I would highly recommend giving it a read:
In short, /newwave/ is a reaction to the sanitized political environment of the 2010s, which many young men online found completely suffocating. In response, /newwave/ seeks to shock and offend, not necessarily by being maximally contrarian, but more by killing the “sacred cows” of PC discourse. Characters in /newwave/ are often racist, chauvinistic, or a little bit of both. This scene may have its roots on the /lit/ board of 4chan, but much of its recent vitality has come from the nascent dissident right.
While /newwave/ may be the most countercultural of these categories, it is probably also the most stylistically aligned with classic literature. /lit/ users frequently praise well-respected yet alternative works of literary fiction like Stoner by John Williams, The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O’Toole. /newwave/ may have its origins on /lit/, but the median /lit/ user is far more likely to have read actual classic books than anything considered “/newwave/”.
The taste of /newwave/ skews very androgenic, with a heavy emphasis on unfiltered masculine thoughts. Michel Houllebecq, a French author known for characters who are overtly sexist, racist, and otherwise resentful, is perhaps the only modern literary author that has earned its respect. Houellebecq serves as a rare example of an author who is not “cucked” in the modern West; that is, he is skilled enough that mainstream institutions won’t force him to suppress his “dangerous” / “based” views.
While /newwave/ has sold a few books, it is still probably more niche than the other genres on this list. The future of /newwave/ really depends on whether it is able to create its own parallel institutions.
Web Serial Fantasy
Web serials are books written on a chapter-by-chapter schedule often releasing a few times a week; for example, a new chapter every Tuesday and Friday. Serialized fiction did not begin on the Internet and can be traced back to Charles Dickens who wrote serialized novels published in weekly or monthly installments beginning in the 1830s. However, the modern style can take advantage of the interaction authors have with their communities to change the story based on the preferred plotlines and characters of readers.
In the present day, most popular web serials are fantasies with a setting inspired by Western fantasy tropes and drawn heavily from Dungeons and Dragons featuring elves, wizards, dungeon crawling, and an eternally pre-industrial level of technology. A central characteristic of almost all web serial fantasy is progression: protagonists become stronger throughout the story overcoming increasingly difficult challenges. This is often done explicitly with the protagonist gaining stats and skills as they level up in a game-like style in what is called a LitRPG. These stories feature stat blocks of varying complexity which interrupt the text and change as the protagonist advances through the story. Even when characters are not living in such systems explicitly, protagonists may advance by mastering magic, martial arts, or superpowers—similar to the structure of shonen anime like Naruto.
Alternatively, some web serials draw on Eastern fantasy, especially xianxia, a Chinese genre inspired by Daoist legends and teachings. These stories focus on cultivation (a form of meditation to give martial and spiritual strength), hierarchical sects, and magical beasts generally involving a protagonist starting from nothing working towards an end goal of immortality. Similar to their western counterparts, these stories still focus on progression as the protagonist strengthens and gains abilities as they progress through stages in their cultivation. While the genre is far more popular in China, many of these stories written in English by fans of the genre are popular. Whether they are more straightforward such as Forge of Destiny or subvert the standard xianxia tropes such as in Beware of Chicken.
Several of these stories are also isekai in which the protagonist is from Earth and is somehow transported to this other world. Often these protagonists are self-inserts who are not heavily characterized and allow the reader to easily fantasize about themselves going through the heroic adventures in the story. As a result, similar to shonen manga/anime which share many of these characteristics, web serial fantasy tends to be primarily read by a younger male audience.
Royal Road is the largest hub on which to find web serial fantasy, and their best rated tends to be a pretty good indicator of quality. Authors often monetize their stories through platforms like Patreon by giving subscribers chapters ahead of the public, as well as the ability to influence the story (by, for instance, voting to decide which side character gets a chapter from their perspective).
Many of these web serials are later compiled into successful ebooks or audiobooks, occasionally being removed from free public access afterwards (such as Dungeon Crawler Carl and The Primal Hunter). As a result, it is quite easy to read or listen to books which originated as web serials without ever reading web fiction at all.
The format of web serial fantasy (similar to long-running serialized entertainment like TV shows) often leads to a decline in quality over time. This is especially pronounced on the web, as the more successful Patreon-supported authors can make a living full-time but only insofar as they keep pumping out chapters for a book that would have ended more naturally long ago. As a result, most web serial fantasies lack satisfying endings, slowly decreasing in quality until the author burns out and the novel is left perpetually unfinished.
Interactive Fiction
Interactive fiction (IF) is a broad category of web fiction in which input from the reader influences their narrative experience. You can think of it as digital “choose your own adventure” (CYOA), although this term does not encompass the full IF experience. Most “Internet-y” IF is heavily inspired by the actual design of the web, taking advantage of things like fake sites and applications to create immersion.
The line between IF and video games is a bit blurry. IF is usually split into two main categories: parser and hypertext. Parsers take text input from the user (think classic games like Zork or Colossal Cave Adventure) and usually require some skill to complete, whereas hypertext is more traditional CYOA with clickable items and a greater focus on the overarching narrative. I consider parsers to be more like video games, while hypertext feels more like literature. But because these categories run together in the same scene, it’s hard to say that one of these should be completely excluded.
The most significant author of hypertext fiction is Porpentine, who wrote a polemic against the dominance of parser fiction called “Creation Under Capitalism and the Twine Revolution” (2012). She might object to my rigid taxonomy, but Porpentine’s essay distinguishes hypertext in a similar way. And Porpentine’s hypertext definitely has literary influences— her most famous work, howling dogs, begins with a line from the literary novel The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away by Kenzaburō Ōe.
IF is a surprisingly mature genre, with parallel institutions that rival the Hugo and Nebula Awards in their vitality. Many of these have been running since the heyday of text-based games in the 90s. Spring Thing, the XYZZY Awards, and IFComp form the “Big Three” of IF awards, with the XYZZYs Awards being the most influential. There is also a thorough Interactive Fiction Database, which has an IMDB-like interface.
Unfortunately for this taxonomy, most of the interactive fiction that has “escaped containment” on the Internet is not particularly canonical. One interesting edge case is visual novels, a Japanese medium that is half book, half video game. These works are often dating sims, in which the player must pick a romantic prospect and guide the protagonist to romantic success. A full survey of visual novels is beyond the scope of this post, but web fiction has borrowed a great deal from the genre.
The most famous IF, Homestuck, is also not a particularly canonical example of IF. It’s not hypertext fiction, a video game, nor a webcomic, but it has elements of all three. Homestuck is an interactive digital fever dream that resists description, and yet it is probably the most influential work of Internet literature to date. While nothing quite like Homestuck has been created since, its dedicated fans have spilled over into web fiction scenes of all kinds. Some have written fics of their own, while others like
scour the web in the hopes of finding something that scratches that same itch.I was unsure whether to make this its own category, but there is a distinct category of web fiction that is close to IF in spirit, but it doesn’t quite fit the definition. I call this category parallax fiction, in reference to the parallax scrolling mechanic that defines the reading experience.
Unfortunately, 17776 and its sequel 20020 are the only two major examples of parallax fiction. This is because parallax fiction is quite hard to create on a technological level. It generally requires institutional support, which is why 17776 is funded and hosted by a major media corporation (Vox Media). Mainstream outlets like NYT may invest in parallax nonfiction (see: Snow Fall), but do not display the same willingness to fund fictional narratives. Even if this status quo changed, getting works as “Internet-y” as 17776 and 20020 would still be the exception rather than the rule.
Interactive fiction seems to me like it has the highest upside of these genres, but its future largely depends on technological and artistic progress. I will be interested to see if AI lowers the barrier to entry for this genre, making it more feasible for an ambitious work of interactive fiction to come from the work of a single individual.
Synthesized Sunsets Web Fic Essentials
Now that this genre landscape has been established, we’d like to introduce some of our favorite works of web fiction. Each work will be tagged with the above bolded categories that they are most associated with. We tried to primarily select for quality, but we also placed a bit of weight on importance and balancing a wide range of styles.
Links in titles!
1. Homestuck — Andrew Hussie
Tags: interactive-fiction, internet-folklore
Wordcount: ~950,000
Status: Completed
Almost certainly the most influential work of web fiction, Homestuck sits in a class of its own. Homestuck is difficult to categorize and even harder to summarize. It is part webcomic, part IF, and part flash game. Try imagining the most “Internet” thing you can think of, and then imagine something a little bit more Internet than that.
The story follows a kid named John Egbert, who inadvertently triggers the end of the world by installing an upcoming game on his computer. After this fateful event, he joins forces with his friends and a group of horned aliens to create a new universe by beating the game, which involves a series of convoluted multiversal adventures.
I have only read a bit of Homestuck, so I cannot give it any official recommendation. What I can say is that its fandom boasts some of the most active curators of general web fiction, and it has a persistent vitality that is rare for a work that ended over a decade ago. Readers were hungry for similar stories after Homestuck’s conclusion, which is why the Discord (run by the aforementioned
) is still the best forum that I know of for finding new and interesting web fiction.Digital natives will know that Homestuck has a bit of a… reputation on the Internet (especially in its heyday), but there’s no denying the influence that it has had on the broader web fiction scene. If you want to get a better sense of what this community is like, the Discord has an incredibly exhaustive history of itself called Several People Are Typing. If nothing else, it is a very interesting place.
—K
2. Worm — Wildbow
Tags: antihero-web-fiction, superhero-fiction, rational-fiction
Wordcount: ~1,680,000
Status: Completed
Worm is a sprawling superhero fic about Taylor Herbert, a “parahuman” that develops the power to control all bugs within a one-mile radius. She starts out with idealistic goals about how she will bring peace to her crime-ridden neighborhood, but she starts to lose faith as she comes to term with the harsh realities of superhero politics. The central question of Worm is this: when do the ends stop justifying the means?
Worm probably has the most conventional literary merit out of all the rational fiction. The text may be unwieldy, but its dizzying scope, cerebral action, and creative moral dilemmas invite comparisons to works like The Dark Knight. While Wildbow’s later works are said to be better on a technical level, none have been able to resonate like Worm. The same can generally be said of Worm’s imitators (of which there are many).
This is partially because Worm is interesting on a meta-level, as Wildbow has quite the unique writing process. Rather than plotting out the events of the story far in advance, Wildbow takes things as they come. He often writes action sequences without a clear idea of how they will resolve, which gives his writing a very cerebral quality. Wildbow is really able to get inside Taylor’s head during sticky situations, because her sticky situation is also his own. In addition, Wildbow sometimes throws random chance into the mix. For example, during one climactic fight he used a random number generator to determine whether each character would die (including the protagonist!).
Like many web serials, Worm has a weak beginning, an acclaimed middle section, and a controversial ending. I wouldn’t recommend Worm to everyone; the writing is only serviceable on a sentence level, the pacing is quite inconsistent, and it often feels a bit like a YA novel. But I would give this a strong recommendation if it seems like the sort of thing that would be up your alley.
—K
3. The Future of Football (17776) — Jon Bois
Tags: parallax-fiction, interactive-fiction
Wordcount: ~70,000
Status: Unfinished
Kevin has written a more in-depth article about 17776, which you can check out here.
17776 imagines a world thousands of years in the future where humanity is in an eternal stasis. Unable to give birth or die, they invent more and more elaborate ways to play American football to occupy their time. 17776 is a multimedia experience, augmenting text with images, videos, and animated Google Earth satellite images. 17776 bounces between ridiculous football shenanigans and existential dread as it grapples with questions of whether anything has meaning in the face of immortality.
Outside of its sequel 20020, which has the same style with a more contained narrative, there is not really anything even remotely similar to 17776. Stylistically, the Secret Base YouTube channel (also started by Jon Bois) are somewhat similar, but these aren’t even web fiction. 20020 is still incomplete and as it was supposed to finish four years ago I am not particularly hopeful it ever will.
17776 and 20020 were rare stories that made me laugh aloud and tear up when reading them. Reading them felt like opening a door to a whole new way of telling a story, and more than anything else I felt disappointment that there was nothing else like it. I would definitely recommend 17776 to anyone who likes both sci-fi and football.
—G
4. There Is No Antimemetics Division — qntm
Tags: internet-folklore, creepypasta, rational-fiction
Wordcount: ~84,000
Status: Completed
There Is No Antimemetics Division is a story about an intelligence division that guards humanity from “antimemetics”— entities that erase memory of their own existence. Because of the nature of their work, agents in the antimemetics division must be fully prepared for any and all contingencies starting the first day on the job. Because no, this is not your first day.
A bit of context is needed for There Is No Antimemetics Division, as it has its origins in a sort of creepypasta compilation called SCP Foundation. SCP Foundation is a wiki for containing fictional dangerous objects tracked by the SCP Foundation, which aims to “Secure, Contain, and Protect” humanity from them. SCP Foundation is primarily composed of this “technical document horror” (contributed by countless readers), but many readers have also written accompanying tales. This situates SCP Foundation at the unique intersection of Internet folklore, rational fiction, and normal hard sci-fi.
The most conventionally literary writer to come out of this sphere is qntm or Sam Hughes, an author of speculative fiction and existential horror. Unlike most of the writers on this list, qntm is actually trying to become a respected author in the sci-fi mainstream, recently publishing his book through conventional channels.
I think it’s funny that There Is No Antimemetics Division went the mainstream sci-fi route, because to me it is by far the most context-dependent out of all of these works. I don’t know how I would react to There Is No Antimemetics Division if I didn’t have the broader context of SCP Foundation. But there are still some really compelling ideas about identity, the nature of truth, and how it feels to really care about an organization as it undergoes slow institutional collapse. I would recommend this book to anyone who really likes hard-sci, as well as qntm’s short story Valuable Humans in Transit.
—K
5. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality — Eliezer Yudkowsky
Tags: rational-fiction, rationalist-fiction, rational-fanfiction
Wordcount: ~660,000
Status: Completed
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (HPMOR) is a Harry Potter fanfic which imagines an unreasonably brilliant Harry at the pinnacle of scientific knowledge as he attempts to parse through the ridiculousness of magic and the wizarding world.
HPMOR is simultaneously the most popular thing to come out of the rationalist community and the most popular Harry Potter fanfiction, where in both cases quite different from anything else you might find. This story is ultimately a vehicle to teach rationalism (sort of like a fictional version of his Sequences), and if you are looking for an introduction to rationalism you couldn’t do much better than HPMOR.
The most surprising thing about this book for me was how hard the emotional beats hit. Despite his increased intelligence, Harry is still a kid, immature in some ways, who is thrown in a dangerous world where he is incredibly powerful and his actions have massive consequences. If this sounds even slightly compelling, I would recommend checking HPMOR out, as you will likely know immediately whether you find the prose charming or extremely irritating.
—G
6. Mother of Learning — nobody103
Tags: web-serial-fantasy, rational-fiction
Wordcount: ~784,000
Status: Completed
Mother of Learning is a fantasy web serial about a magical student who is stuck in a month-long time loop, which culminates in an invasion of the city in which his magical academy is located. The protagonist Zorian begins as a driven but immature teenager, but he grows in both power and maturity as his circumstances force him to accept great responsibility.
This story is exceedingly well-liked, consistently ranking first on the web serial site Royal Road, and I think this is largely due to how well-executed every aspect of this story is. It features an impressively in-depth world situated above an infinite dungeon beyond human comprehension. The telepathic spider species of the aranea, are one of my favorite non-human societies depicted in fiction. The other characters in the story are compelling and memorable, despite the setting of a time loop resetting memories at the end of every month.
I think Mother of Learning is the most satisfying example of progression in anything I have read, as Zorian continuously gains in power from humble beginnings, with every step feeling hard-earned. If I were to split the story into thirds, I think the first and final third were fantastic, while in the middle the story slowed down a little. I would recommend Mother of Learning to pretty much anyone who thinks, the premise sounds at least somewhat interesting, as it is the most consistently well-liked among the books we have listed here and serves as a good introduction to web fiction in general.
—G
7. The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere — Lurina
Tags: web-serial-fantasy, rational-fiction, antihero-web-fiction
Wordcount: ~1,170,000+
Status: Active
I have written a more in-depth article about The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, which you can check out here.
The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere is a murder mystery about a group of prodigious young magical scholars who visit an infamous immortality cult. The protagonist Utsu is an antihero who constantly feels such overwhelming guilt that it is easy to forget she has actually done bad things. The story is set in a simulated world, which is itself generated by an artifact that was created to preserve humanity beyond the end of the universe. Further elements of the setting, including magic systems, cultures, histories, and politics, are similarly fleshed out and confusing.
Lurina’s prose is far more stylistically ambitious then the majority of other works here, and The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere is the single book I have written down the most quotes from due to sheer awe at how cool they sound. The plot of the story, while intricate and compelling, moves quite slowly, with the primary focus on conversations between incredibly interesting characters.
The story primarily takes inspiration from visual novels, especially the horror murder mystery When They Cry. I have not played it, so I cannot comment much, but I would guess that this influences the dialogue-heavy style which continues even in the midst of action sequences.
The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere reminds me most of two different types of books that are normally quite unrelated. One type is conversation-focused literary novels where not much happens like in Middlemarch or The Savage Detectives. And the other type is very idea-dense speculative fiction like Death’s End or The Way of Kings. If both types of books appeal to you and you are willing to read something with a very slow pace, I would recommend The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere.
—G
8. The Wandering Inn — pirateaba
Tags: web-serial-fantasy, lit-rpg, isekai, cozy-fantasy
Wordcount: ~14,000,000+
Status: Active
The Wandering Inn is a massive fantasy work in which Erin, a kind-hearted college-aged girl from Michigan, becomes an innkeeper in a fantasy world with classes and levels. The most notable thing about The Wandering Inn is its mind-boggling length. To give a sense of scale, the collected works of highly prolific fantasy author Brandon Sanderson (55 books) total approximately 6 million words, while The Wandering Inn is more than double that at 14 million words. This length of the text defines it more than any genre could: its world is bigger and more well-developed than anything else you will read, hundreds of characters have their own vividly memorable ambitions and faults, and anticipation for some major events can build for literally millions of words.
The tone of the story changes a lot throughout. It is often lighthearted and ridiculous, but the world is also dark, and pirateaba is not afraid to kill off beloved characters in climactic battles. I actually think pirateaba is a lot better at writing epic fantasy and horror than slice-of-life, so these darker sections tend to hold up as the strongest parts to me. At least to me, the prose gets noticeably better as pirateaba “locks in” to write these more important chapters.
While I stopped reading it a few years ago (as it had been getting progressively worse for a while), I read chapters as they came out for three years. The Wandering Inn is the only web serial for which I have been able to do this over a long period of time, as there are normally about two 30k-word chapters that come out each week. Probably the ten characters that I have read the most about are all from The Wandering Inn, and this allows for an unparalleled level of attachment and connection simply due to the length of time I have spent with them. This makes many scenes hit that much harder.
I would not recommend The Wandering Inn to the majority of people, but if you find yourself with plenty of time on your hands, and you enjoy long narratives where you become progressively more attached to the characters over time, it might be worth checking out. I would also recommend starting out with reading Wistram Days, which is a series of chapters providing backstory to a few major characters that can function as a standalone novel. It is probably more compelling than the start of The Wandering Inn, which begins rather slowly.
—G
9. UNSONG — Scott Alexander
Tags: rational-fiction, rationalist-fiction
Wordcount: ~238,000
Status: Completed
UNSONG is a rationalist fic about an alternate history in which Jewish mysticism happens to be true. Instead of the Apollo 8 mission getting into orbit the moon, it crashes into a celestial sphere that maintains the state of the Earth. This has many (mostly bad, all interesting) implications, but the main reason this story exists is probably just so Scott Alexander can make a bunch of Judaism puns. Which I’m not really all that mad about.
Reading UNSONG is kind of like watching some super niche TikTok that only you and approximately 200 other people on the Earth would ever get. There are certain jokes that are so targeted to people in the Scott Alexander demographic that even the audacity alone makes them kind of funny. (A particularly long pun-filled section about cantors, Georg Cantor, singers, and Peter Singer comes to mind.)
Despite all its silliness, I really do think UNSONG has a great plot and meaningful moments that aren’t just elaborate bits. The main cast is annoyingly likable at times, and as a result a lot of the emotional beats hit way harder than you might expect. I especially appreciate Scott’s solution to the problem of evil, as well as the big reveal that occurs late in the book. It was one of those books that I just couldn’t put down.
I think it should be clear whether or not you will enjoy UNSONG at this point— it’s certainly not for everyone, but if it’s for you, then it’s really for you.
—K
10. Birdland — Brendan Patrick Hennessy
Tags: interactive-fiction, hypertext-fiction
Wordcount: ~25,000
Status: Completed
Birdland is a bit of an odd pick for this list, but it serves to balance out all the hard, rational sci-fi that characterizes the rest. It is a canonical Twine hypertext fic that puts you in the shoes of Bridget Leaside, a teenager girl who is just trying to fit in at summer camp. During your stay, you have several dreamlike encounters with strange bird creatures, who have unclear origins and goals.
Birdland is also definitely the product of a different part of the Internet. It’s more Tumblr than 4chan, more AO3 than LessWrong. It captures a specific part of the American teenage experience, but it also captures a specific part of the Internet, which are both characterized by an overwhelming desire to be known.
I don’t remember much of the specific events of Birdland, but I remember the warm feeling it gave me throughout. Even though Birdland is definitely trying to get you to experience a specific narrative created by the author, it still feels very personalized— especially the evocative dream sequences. Which I think any good hypertext story should aspire to do! I will admit to not having read a ton of hypertext, but I am hoping to change that in the near future. I would recommend Birdland to anyone who feels a nostalgic childhood attachment to staying at summer camp or being online.
—K
Conclusion
This concludes our thorough guide to the world of web fiction, which at this point has probably overstayed its welcome. We expect there to be a few inaccuracies in coverage of such a massive topic, so please let us know if we made any mistakes. Do you have any web fic recommendations? Drop your favorites in the comments!
To get the most out of a reviewer you need to know what they look for in their fiction. What's makin's 'focus' on that score?
interesting article, glad I saw this.
If I could offer some critique, this feels very much like a summary written by a typical ratfic reader, i.e. someone who started out with HPMOR, or maybe Scott Alexander's fiction or perhaps Worm, and then spread out from there. You've correctly identified the major Western, male canon, but I'd argue this is going to be the smallest part of any overall webfiction canon.
First I think leaving fanfic as a mere mention cuts out a huge quantity of female-focused romance fiction. While it's fair to put fanfiction as a separate thing, a ton of original fiction has arisen from fanfic routes. Harry Potter fanfics produced a bunch of authors, Cassandra Clare being an early example with her original work published in the 2000s. 50 shades of grey was notably a Twilight fanfiction. And more recently, "Romantasy" as an independent genre has emerged, with Sarah J. Mass beginning her series on fanfiction.net.
I'd also argue that not mentioning webcomics leaves out a vast array of fiction, both female- and male-oriented. I personally know little about the webcomic world, but from what I've seen the amount of content is just as large as that available on sites like RR or Fanfiction.net.
Second, and far larger, is webfiction originating from East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea. You touch on Xianxia, but I'm surprised you don't mention that even in English webfic sites, a huge chunk of popular stories are just translations of East Asian web fiction. In Japan it's really quite a mature market, with a number of popular IPs going through the Webnovel -> Light Novel -> Manga/Anime route to mainstream success.
Just for reference, numbers 2 and 4 in the highest grossing "book" apps on Google Play are Goodnovel - which appears to be a Singapore based team - and Webnovel - which is Chinese.