Compared to last week’s bumper crop, we’ve a fairly small serving of free fiction this Friday … but there’s always something fresh to read on the intarwebs.

Webzines!

• Orion’s Child SF/F webzine returns with Vol. 2, #5.
• Subterranean Online‘s Fall 07 issue is now complete – de Lint, Bear, Lansdale, Stross and more!
• We mentioned it once already, but I’ll give a second crack of the whip to Steampunk Magazine issue #3, available as a free-to-download PDF file.

Only one new item at ManyBooks.net (that I’ve seen linked, at least): "Pagan Passions" by Gordon Randall Garrett.

Mac Tonnies has had his CC-licensed short story "The Reenactment" published at Alterati.

The current edition of Chris Roberson‘s free fiction feature that occurs on a Friday has an entire stand-alone short story for your perusal: "Penumbra".

The Friday Flash gang is a few writers short this week, but there’s still some super-short fiction from Shaun C. Green ("Satisfaction"), Neil Beynon ("When I was bad"), Gareth D. Jones ("The Man Behind The Throne") and yours truly ("The Mud-Crab"), if you want to keep it bite-sized.

If you’re hungry for more, and you’re keen on a bit of heavy-duty lit-crit, you can always go and read a transcript of John Clute‘s talk that he gave to the American Centre in Prague back in September, wherein he discusses ‘Fantastika’ – a bracket term he uses for "that wide range of fictional works whose contents are understood to be fantastic". Like all of Clute’s work, it’s intensely brilliant and very complex, and always worth the read.

Enjoy your weekend!

Writers, editors and anyone else – if you have some material published for people to read toll-free here on the wonderful intarwebs, drop me a line using the email address listed for me (Paul Raven) on the Futurismic staff page, and I’ll add it to the next batch.