Membership

Transfer Orbit is a newsletter about science fiction, writing, and the future of reading, and it's largely written by Andrew Liptak.

I'm a journalist who's covered entertainment and fandom for more than a decade for places like io9, OneZero, Polygon, Tor.com, and others, and this newsletter is a way for me to continue that work independently. While largely free, a small contingent of readers help supports this work.

Transfer Orbit has garnered praise from authors, professionals, and members of the SF/F community, who've called Liptak "one of the important critics and reviewers in the genre," and the newsletter an "indispensable resource" and a "great combination of commentary, reporting, and analysis" of the SF world.

It's been featured in The Washington Post and Vulture, and has been reprinted in outlets such as Slate and Lifehacker.

Public and Supporting subscribers

There are two tiers of readers for Transfer Orbit: public and supporting.

Public

These are posts that everybody can read:

• A weekly-ish "Roundup" message (which pulls out a couple of key pieces of news about the science fiction and fantasy world, links to long reads that might be of interest, and a roundup of what I've been reading lately)
• Book reviews
• Monthly roundup of new SF/F books each month.

Supporters

Supporters are members with a paid subscription to Transfer Orbit. Their support helps keep this newsletter running – subscriptions help pay for hosting on Ghost, various tools, books and resources for dedicated reporting, etc.

• Supporters get all posts from Transfer Orbit emailed to them, and the occasional pay-walled post with extra commentary or reporting.
• Dedicated Slack group to chat with their fellow readers.
• The occasional short story that I finish.

Why Support Transfer Orbit?

The media environment is chaotic. There are plenty of sites out there delivering low-quality news about the state of genre books, films, television shows, games, and more. Transfer Orbit is a newsletter designed to cut through the clickbait, sensational, and irrelevant reporting to provide readers with a clear idea of the state of the stories we love, through contextual and in-depth reporting.

Subscribing helps support this work, in which I look to explore and explain the mechanics of the SF/F world and why it matters to you, a reader, viewer, or listener. Subscribers also help support the publication for the larger subscription base by allowing me to devote time and resources (like transcription, images, editing, hosting, etc.) to tell these stories, round up the news, and highlight what might next appear on your TBR pile.