The Sci-Friday Tag List

A one-stop shop for who's participating in Sci-Friday on Substack.

Jan 04, 2025

Tag List (.txt file)

Hard link (copy to your browser’s navigation bar if needed):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bLPLUQCS1L2xHzh6j4I80WY2hPQ7-5lQ/view?usp=sharing

The tag list was last updated on January 18, 2025, at 1:05 p.m. The next update will arrive by Friday, January 24.

The Substack handles of Sci-Friday participants are listed in a text (.txt) file, publicly available in Google Drive. Copy the list from Drive or download the file. It can be opened in various programs, e.g. Notepad, Wordpad, or Microsoft Word.

Only handles appear in the file, each separated by a single space. So, you can select all text (Ctrl + A), copy it (Ctrl + C), and paste it (Ctrl + Shift + V) into your Notes post.

Note: The keystroke Ctrl + V may copy the text with formatting. You want to copy it without formatting, so use Ctrl + Shift + V. Alternatively, open your own document, copy the text there, then select it all and copy-and-paste again. This is a bit clunky, but once you figure out how to do it cleanly, you’ll know going forward.

Click at the end of a name; Substack should auto-suggest the person to be tagged. In many cases, the name is unique enough that Substack makes only one suggestion.

However, in some cases, you’ll see many suggestions. No worries! Consult the list of tagged Sci-Friday participants, below. On a computer, you can hover your mouse over someone’s name to see a preview of their profile.

List of Sci-Friday Participants

Participants are listed alphabetically by first name or username. Initials are treated like any other name, and first-word articles (a, an, the) are ignored.

If you wish to be added or removed, see Opt-In / Opt-Out, below.

Opt-In / Opt-Out

If you wish to be added to or removed from this curated Sci-Friday tag list — meaning both the .txt file and the tagged list of participants above — please leave a comment on this page. I’ll oblige as soon as I can.

Please bear with me if it takes a while. I don’t always have immediate Internet access. If I don’t act within two weeks, reply to your original comment and nudge me.

Unless absolutely necessary, please do not send me direct / private messages!

Sci-Friday Etiquette

In Sci-Friday posts on Notes, it’s common for people to include an opt-out disclaimer below the list of people they’ve tagged, reading, “If you don’t want to be tagged, please let me know and I’ll remove you” — or some version of that. I encourage this.

If someone asks to be removed, honor their request yourself in your post on Notes (of course), and if you’ve downloaded the .txt file, remove their name from your copy, so you won’t accidentally tag them again in the future. But since their request suggests they might not want to participate in Sci-Friday, feel free also to give them the link to this page, where they can submit an opt-out request to get off my curated list. Do not submit an opt-out request to me on their behalf (see my rules below).

And this really should go without saying (but whenever you think it should, it doesn’t): the Sci-Friday action takes place on Fridays only in Substack Notes.

When to Expect Updates

I will update the .txt file and list of participants on this page as regularly as possible, most likely on Thursday nights, so everyone can get a freshly updated list for use in posts on Friday.

My Rules

I’m doing this as a voluntary service for the Substack sci-fi community. While I don’t expect thanks, I do expect courtesy from folks. These are my rules:

Request opt-in / opt-out by commenting on this page, not by PM / DM.
Do not ask me to add or remove someone else. Instead, if they wish to be added or removed, give them the link to this page. I will honor any opt-in / opt-out request I receive directly from the participant in question.
So there’s no clutter and I can easily find people’s requests, please do not carry on conversations in this page’s comment section. (If you want to drop a word of thanks for my efforts, that’s fine, and I’ll reply, but let’s leave it at that.)
This page is only a home for the tag list. It is not a forum to post for Sci-Friday — so again, to reduce clutter, please don’t. Sci-Friday posts belong in Notes.
Do not ask me to collect, publish, promote, or restack your work — that’s not what this page is for.

If curating this list becomes an onerous chore for me or if at some point I decide to close down my substack, I’ll try to find someone else to take over this curating job.

Disclaimer

I don’t “own” this tag list; I’m only curating it.

I don’t “run” Sci-Friday, either. As far as I can tell, nobody runs Sci-Friday. It just happens. I’ve been told

Andrew Smith

and

Dré Labre

had a hand in starting it.

I’m curating the list to encourage Sci-Friday and make life easier for the participants, including myself.

Von

publishes a review of Sci-Friday posts. I have no connection to that.

Why This Exists

I’d been publishing my science fiction on Substack — and wondering where the other sci-fi writers were — for months before I learned of Sci-Friday, the weekly ritual in which writers post their work (or someone else’s work) and tag other writers in Notes.

Andy Futuro

inducted me. Soon, I saw how valuable it was for connecting people and exposing us all to each other’s writing.

Soon, too, I began squinting at other participants’ lists of writers, trying to determine if So-and-So was already on the list I got from Andy, to which I was regularly adding new names as I saw them. It became apparent that in fact there were several lists with lots of crossover but also discrepancies. I could find no single list of all the participants.

I love things people do organically without central planning, but the multiplicity of circulating lists is confusing and cumbersome, and it can give rise to problems.

For instance, it’s a common courtesy for Sci-Friday folks to say, “If you don’t want to be tagged, please let me know and I’ll remove you.” But with multiple, redundant lists around, you might ask to be removed — to stop participating in Sci-Friday — but still find yourself being tagged by other people weeks or even months later.

With so many people active in Sci-Friday and more joining in all the time, I think it just makes sense to have a one-stop shop where folks can find a fully current list of participants — One List to Rule Them All. (Ahem, sorry, I’ll just show myself out…)

While you’re here…

I’d love for you to take a gander at what I publish on Singular Dream! The centerpiece is Quibble, a cybermonk sci-fi novel set in a far-future transhuman theocracy. I also write reflections on the novel’s themes, other books which inspired it, and my writing process. Here’s the best place to get acquainted:

Start here at Singular Dream!