Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores (website review).

‘Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores’ is a website devoted to publishing short stories in various speculative fiction genres as well as art, interviews and resources for authors.

This website feels forgotten, despite the stories that are uploaded roughly once per month. From the ‘About Us’ page I can see that the team behind the site has interesting plans for the site, including competitions, resources and more but none of these plans have yet to be achieved. Three of these in particular are absent. The web authors ‘plan to reprint and illustrate every one of Isaac Asimov’s wonderful science essays’ on this site. It’s the first link under ‘Features’.

Sadly, all that is there is a post that inspired the project written in December 2010. Similarly, the section devoted to translating Johannes Kepler’s ‘Somnium’ languishes with just an introduction to the project and a link directing me to their Kepler Awards. A somewhat sad award which has yet to have judges despite being several years old.

There are typos throughout the site, in both the submitted stories and the other site content. Even the bios of the team behind the site.

‘The Storytelling Room’ is an excellent addition with video and audio of some of the submitted stories. A great way for new authors to be appreciated by those who may have trouble reading on a screen. But there are the errors even here, with different authors being listed in the text of the page and the video file of one story.

The ideas that inspired this site are good but the overall feel is of neglect and old age, despite the regular updates. The site design is early 90s and needs an overhaul to correct changing font sizes and misaligned boxes. Many sections are blank or have exciting introductions for features that haven’t been updated as promised. The ‘Anybody Can Write A Novel’ section that began in February 2018 and will be updated ‘weekly’ has a single entry.

I look forward to heading back to this site if and when the team are able to modernise the look, including formatting for phones and make good on their many ambitious projects.

LK Richardson

October 2019

check out website: https://cosmicrootsandeldritchshores.com/

We can’t provide a first page scan because there is an inhibitor preventing the art to be shown.