Reactor lives!
If you’re reading this, it means the redesigned and renamed Reactor magazine site (formerly Tor.com) is now live and ready to face the hideous light of judgment for you to use and read. Things have shifted during travel–mostly on purpose–so we’ve assembled a quick guide on how to relocate your favorite writers, columns, and topics.
Note: These directions are for the desktop version of the website, but the icons displayed are the same on the mobile version.
If you just want to report a bug or error, you can use this form.
Creating And Updating Your Account & Favorites
Where do I login or sign up?
Select the circle icon at the top right of the homepage (pictured here). Your username and password are the same as they were on Tor.com. You can also login at the new comment field within any article that has comments open.
How do I favorite/bookmark a writer I like, an article, a column, etc.?
If something can be bookmarked and saved to your user account, it will have a white flag-shaped icon (pictured above). Just click that and it should fill in. If a bookmark symbol is already filled in, that means you already bookmarked it!
Where do I see all my bookmarks?
They’re within your user account page. Click the circle icon on the top right of the homepage or, if you’re already logged in, you can click the bookmark flag on the top right of the homepage to go directly to them.
All my favorites from Tor.com are gone!
These proved harder to liberate from Tor.com than we expected, but they should be back into everyone’s user accounts by February.
Commenting on Reactor
No time to read the article, I must comment!
Jump straight to comments by clicking the word bubble icon at the top of an article (pictured here) or by the article’s published date on the homepage.
How do I comment?
This one is pretty straightforward. You can input your name and email and go through the CAPTCHA or login to your Reactor account to add a new comment.
OH MY GOD I CAN REPLY TO OTHER COMMENTS NOW
Yes! We took a bold step into the year 2009 and changed our comments from a single thread to nested. (For newer users, if you see old comments that start with @# that is how we used to have to reply to other commenters.)
How do I flag an inappropriate comment?
Just select the flag icon in the comment itself. You can also give a comment a thumbs up if you really love it. And if you really want to confuse us, you can do both.
(A quick note that we see that the comment threads aren’t automatically open/expanded and that’s on our bug list.)
I made a comment but it’s not appearing.
Some articles will hold comments until the moderator team can approve them. Tends to happen a lot on the weekends so we can go touch grass.
Alternately, you may have run up against our Moderation Policy.
I made a comment on this older article but now it’s gone!
Comments on Tor.com from October 2023 to January 2024 are proving trickier to import into Reactor. They’ll get here eventually, it’s just going to take a bit.
Where To Find Everything
Where is my favorite reread/rewatch/series?
They’re called “Columns” now and you can get to them through main navigation or through the “Latest Columns” carousel at the top of the homepage.
Right now, only currently active and recently completed Columns appear in the “Columns” page. We’ll be adding more of our completed Columns (rereads/rewatches/themes/etc.) over the course of February. They’re not gone. We just need a bit more time to make them navigable on the new site.
Where is my favorite short story, poem, book excerpt/piece of fiction?
Under the “Fiction” menu in main navigation.
Where is my favorite author/writer?
If you see their byline anywhere on the site, click their name and you’ll be taken to their profile, which contains everything they’ve ever written on Reactor (formerly Tor.com).
Alternately, you can manually find them by typing out “www.reactormag.com/author/firstname-lastname”.
You can also search for them alphabetically in the “Authors” link in the footer of the site.
Where is my favorite topic/interest/subject to read about?
It might be in the “Interests” menu in the main navigation! If not, you can click on the tag when you see it in an article or manually type “www.reactormag.com/tag/space-horse-stories” or whatever it is you’re into. No judgments. Keep it clean.
Where is just ONE PAGE where everything is listed in ONE PLACE in the order it was published, like you used to do?
Just click “Latest” in the main navigation. Or go to the “All Articles” section at the bottom of the homepage.
What is “Books”, or “Movies & TV”, or “Featured Essays”?
It means the articles in those sections are about books, movies & TV, or are feature essays/thinkpieces that the writer worked really hard on and which no longer get pushed off the site after only a day! New sections will appear and disappear as time goes by, depending on how weird we’re feeling that day.
Where’d the RSS feed go?
It will return soon and we will let you know! We love it, too.
Where did your social media accounts go?
I don’t want to alarm you but some of your short stories and articles are missing their text…??
Yeah that’s a fun new bug that popped up about a week after we went live. It is currently the thing we are chasing with hammers the most. We’ve got a fix just about ready to go.
Random Stuff
Uh, what happened here? Didn’t you used to be Tor.com?
We did! It’s the same people and same fiction and articles, but a new site and a new name. We answer most of everyone’s questions about it here.
Why does your website ask if I’m 13-15 years-old?
It’s an off-putting thing we have been mandated to do by our parent company in order to comply with recent updates to the California Consumer Privacy Act. We’re very sorry about it. Please just click it away and it shouldn’t appear again.
I have an idea for an article.
Head over to our Submissions Guidelines. Reactor is a paying outlet and accepts unsolicited article pitches.
Is the Tordotcom Publishing book imprint and/or Tor Books changing its name?
No!
