Friday Free Fiction for 16th May

Paul Raven @ 16-05-2008

It’s a slim week for free fiction once again, but we’ve still scoured the web for every morsel we could find. And isn’t anything a feast to a starving person? So get stuck in!

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One story and one novel from Manybooks.net:

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Episode 7 of Shadow Unit is Elizabeth Bear’s “Overkill“:

It always started with the phone.

Tonight, that was the only familiar thing, because when Chaz Villette woke groaning to its warble the first thing he remembered was that he wasn’t in his own bed. The second thing he remembered was to try not to disturb the warm, heavy weight pillowed on his numb left arm as he fumbled for the night stand with his right. Her hair was in his mouth, her breath warm against his neck as he opened the phone without bothering to squint at the name on the display. He whispered, “Villette.”

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The thirteenth instalment of Memory will hopefully not prove unlucky for Jayme Lynn Blaschke:

Parric’s wingtip slapped Flavius with a glancing blow across the side of his head, sending him sprawling to the ground. Flavius sprang back up, his face scarlet and eyes blazing.

“Wha’d ya go and do that for?” he shouted at Parric, one fist held ready as his other hand rubbed the side of his head.

“Your obsessings with the Empress is getting you dead once already,” Parric shot back, his featherscales ruffled with agitation. “And almosting me, too. You are needing to self-examining, Flavius, and asking yourself if your ruttings with the Empress are worth the consequences.”

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After a brief interlude Warren Ellis’s Freakangels are back for episode 13. If you’ve been following it, you’ll know it’s already showing lots of promise. If you’ve not been following it, why not start now, huh?

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And let’s round it all off with the measured marching pace of the Friday Flash Fictioneers:

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Looks like that’s your lot for this week - though there’s still masses of good stuff over in the Sidebar Of Free-Fictional Justice, so why not do another webzine a favour and pay them a visit?

In the meantime, keep us posted with your tips - and have a great weekend!


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Where are the new fiction markets?

Paul Raven @ 10-05-2008

Stacks of books and magazinesAs Futurismic’s editor, my interest in this question should be obvious; but it’s also of great interest to the aspiring writer in me as well. I write because I want to write but - in common with a lot of other writers - I’d quite like to get paid for my fiction some day. [image by Thomas Hawk]

So who’s going to give me (or other more competent, imaginative and disciplined writers) money for stories? Well, fellow Flash Fictioneer Gareth D Jones tried something new and pitched a story to a magazine that doesn’t usually run short stories, and had it accepted - his second professional-grade sale, in fact. So perhaps the closest new markets are the markets no one has even tried yet.

Another market, already being tentatively explored, is the one that lies on the blurry boundary between fiction writing and sales copy. For example, the car company Lexus recently commissioned a collaboratively written novel focusing on a young couple taking a journey in their new vehicle - the brand of said vehicle should be easy enough for you to guess.

While that story has the queasy taste of naked commerce to it, I think younger writers will be less bothered by it. We live in an ad-saturated world, and most media-consumers have a certain degree of skill at tuning them out. Perhaps the challenge to write branded fiction that doesn’t smack the reader round the face with its brands will develop new stylistic forms and breed a new wave of great writers.

One thing is for certain, though, and that’s the migration of short fiction online. I’m not just saying that because Futurismic does it (although we do), but because it’s the only way to economically sustain the form in a world where the overheads of print media are heading skywards like pulp fiction rocketships.

Perhaps the web will be the richest source of Gareth’s new markets - remember when we mentioned Will Hindmarch selling a story to a games and media community website? I think the style and shape of short fiction will change as a result, too - but isn’t the continual evolution of art what keeps it interesting, both to consume and to create?

Where do you think you’ll be reading (or publishing) your short stories in twenty years time?


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Friday Free Fiction for 9th May

Paul Raven @ 09-05-2008

Another seven days have passed in the magical land of Intarwub, and they have deposited the usual cargo of free fictional nuggets on their way through; consider this your menu, your guide, your pre-flight check-list …

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A single full book (and a very old one at that) from Manybooks.net:

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Unpublished Heinlein news from Subterranean Online:

“… we’re delighted to bring to light a teleplay co-written by Robert A. Heinlein more than 50 years ago. Delilah and the Space Rigger, is based, of course, on the classic short story. For insight into the practical way in which Heinlein approached writing for the screen, we’re also printing John Scalzi’s introduction.”

***

From Cory Doctorow:

“I’ve just put up my site for Little Brother, my young adult novel about hacker kids who use technology to reclaim the Bill of Rights from the DHS after a terrorist attack on San Francisco.”

Being as it’s a Doctorow title, it comes in many flavours and there are many things you are legally allowed to do with it - pretty much anything except sell it for money.

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Eos are giving away the entirety of Sarah Douglass’s The Serpent Bride as an ebook:

Rescued from unspeakable horror, Ishbel Brunelle has devoted her life to a Serpent cult that reads the future in the entrails of its human sacrifices. But the Serpent has larger plans for Ishbel than merely being archpriestess, plans that call for a dangerous royal marriage balancing on the edge between treachery and devotion, and an eerie, eldritch warning: Prepare for the Lord of Elcho Falling . . .

A bit fantasy for Futurismic readers, perhaps, but an entire free book is not to be sniffed at.

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An email from John T Cullen:

Hi, Futurismic - please check out the free novels and other work at http://www.johntcullen.com/.

I’m the former editor of the late Far Sector SFFH, once the oldest professional webmag of SF/F/H. I’m also the second person in history to release serial chapters of whole novels (1996-7). I think we have a new pioneering effort going on, to be explained in a year or two if it works out. Please come visit.

I remain to be convinced of the validity of that serial-chapter-release business (wasn’t that the standard publishing business model of the Victorian era? Edit in light of clarification from Mr Cullen: serial chapters online), but Mr Cullen sure does have a whole lot of work there on his site. Go take a look.

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Yet more WTFBBQ action from Shadow Unit:

Esther Falkner spent twenty minutes wondering what to do with her hair.

At work, she wore it up, severe and businesslike. At home, she left it loose and long. It was another way to remind herself, Leave the job at the job. Leave home at home.

But compartmentalizing was a temporary coping strategy at best. It failed to account for a backyard potluck barbeque with her co-workers.

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A message from Nathan Lilly reminds us of yet more good shizzle at SpaceWesterns.com: “A Man Called Mister Brown: Mr. Green (part 3 of 8) ” by A.R. Yngve, and “Octopus Tanks” by Max Gladstone. If the latter isn’t the best story title you’ve read all week, I want to know why!

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A message from Gary Ballard:

I saw that you write up free fiction on Fridays and wondered if you’d like to cover my blog novel. It’s called Under the Amoral Bridge and it’s being updated weekly with a new chapter and/or supplementary material.

Consider it covered, Gary! Least we can do for someone who bought some ad space is let the RSS readers know about it too.

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Here’s Memory #12 from Jayme Lynn Blaschke:

Thunder boiled up through Flavius’ arm, threatening to tear muscle from bone and split his skin. It roared through his shoulder and into his head.

His head! His head! His head! Lightning flashed behind his eyes, blinding bursts of fire that swelled within his skull as the terrible pressure built up. Were all the killer waves racing ahead of a storm to ram themselves into a teacup, it’d still be a faint whisper of the torrent pouring into him.

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And now it’s Friday Flash Fiction time! Let’s see what we have …

  • Shaun C Green channels Justin Pickard in “Binary Visions“
  • Justin Pickard (the real one) pitches one out from the depths of Dissertation Hell - it’s “Sublime“
  • Dan Pawley wants to tell you about “Alice“
  • Gareth D Jones wants to tell you about “Rosetta“
  • Neil Beynon is smoking “Quantum Cigars“
  • Sarah Ellender keeps it super-short with “Liquid Smoke“
  • Phred Serenissima is engaged in “The Great Debate“

Apologies this week from Gareth L Powell; he’s celebrating having topped the Interzone reader’s poll. Congratulations, Gareth - well deserved.

Added bonus: not exactly flash, and not exactly a story, but long-time web-buddy and all-round smart dude Sterling “Chip” Camden posted a speculative piece of writing entitled “Conversation with a neighbour” which you might find worth reading.

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What’s that? You want more free fiction? More than I manage to link to here every week?

Well, you’re in luck - I am reliably informed by the SF Signal crew that Free Speculative Fiction Online (the most accurately named website ever) has had a recent update with masses more titles, many of which haven’t been mentioned here. So if you find these weekly round-ups insufficient, that’s where you want to be clicking next.

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Oh, you want dead-tree reading material as well? Good grief, you’re a demanding lot!

Lucky for you, the Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction is offering you a free copy of the July 2008 issue; all you have to do in exchange is blog about it.

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And that’s about your lot, folks - until next week, at least! In the meantime, keep those plugs and tip-offs rolling in, and have a great weekend.


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Friday Free Fiction for 2nd May

Paul Raven @ 02-05-2008

Friday means free fiction as always here at Futurismic, and coming up is your weekly selection of genre wonders that won’t cost you anything to read.

But before you dig in, make sure you go and read our latest published piece of fiction, David Reagan’s “Solitude Ripples From The Past“.

OK, on with the list!

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Some innuendo-laden titles from Manybooks.net:

  • “What The Left Hand Was Doing” by Gordon Randall Garrett - (“There is no lie so totally convincing as something the other fellow already knows-for-sure is the truth. And no cover-story so convincing …”)
  • “Cum Grano Salis” by Gordon Randall Garrett - (“Just because a man can do something others can’t does not, unfortunately, mean he knows how to do it. One man could eat the native fruit and live … but how?”)
  • “Hunters Out Of Space” by Joseph Everidge Kelleam

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Solaris Books are sharing a complete Stephen Baxter story. Originally published in the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Vol 1, “Last Contact” will show you why Baxter is rated as one of hard sf’s best sensawunda guys:

Caitlin walked into the garden through the little gate from the drive. Maureen was working on the lawn.

Just at that moment Maureen’s phone pinged. She took off her gardening gloves, dug the phone out of the deep pocket of her old quilted coat and looked at the screen. “Another contact,” she called to her daughter.

Caitlin looked cold in her thin jacket; she wrapped her arms around her body. “Another super-civilization discovered, off in space. We live in strange times, Mum.”

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Gwyneth Jones has pretty much finished sprucing up her online archive. Another story has been added called “In The Forest Of the Queen”

Furthermore there’s also a pair of critical essays which, despite Ms Jones’ self-effacement, are doubtless well worth a read if you like to analyse your literature as well as read it. They are:

  • String of Pearls - “Sex and horror, perfect playmates or evil twins? Is this a genuine m/f divide? An examination of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel.”
  • Wild Hearts In Uniform - “Secrets of the Pause: What did military sf do, in that brief hiatus when the USA was scratching around for a new external enemy? The answer may surprise you.”

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Apex Science Fiction and Horror Magazine provides “Light Like Knives Dragged Across the Skin” by Paul Jessup.

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke delivers installment 11 of Memory:

The strangling darkness vanished in an instant. His claustrophobic prison burst apart and Flavius found himself soaring a thousand feet above the ground.

He screamed against the rushing wind, flinging forward his cramped arms to shield his head. His sword spun away. The ground weaved wildly, see-sawing back and forth with the shockingly close clouds.

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Freebies via F&SF by Lucius Shepard:

Lucius Shepard is the award-winning author of innumerable classics, many of which have appeared in the pages of F&SF such as “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” and “The Jaguar Hunter” (which you can read online at Infinity Plus). And, of course, he’s currently up for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Locus Award for best novella, for his F&SF story, “Stars Seen Through Stone.”

“Stars …” is a super story, and comes with my recommendation, if that’s worth anything to you.

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Jason Sanford likes to share:

My short story “Maps of the Bible” has just been published over on Monsters and Critics. Set in Alabama during the early 1960s, the tale is in some ways a ghost story (although it would be more correct to place the story within the Southern Gothic genre of literature). “Maps of the Bible” also functions as a prologue to my short novel Jeremiah, which consists of the story sequence “Cold Pelts,” “One Side, Two Weeks, One Bathroom,” and “Water Hearts.”

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Thanks to the tireless Cole Kitchen, I have news of Escape Velocity, a hard science fiction magazine whose e-book versions are free-to-download PDFs. Escape Velocity:

“… publishes sci-fi stories from authors around the globe, future and historical science articles, Special Photo Features, and much more.”

Result! Thanks, Cole - added to the Sidebar of Free Fiction Justice.

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Another couple of additions to the Sidebar:

  • Pantechnicon - a multi-genre webzine with both stories and non-fiction
  • Serendipity - this UK-based webzine specialises in magic realist fiction

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Via Nick Mamatas:

It’s nerdy hobby theme month at Clarkesworld!

Cat Valente brings you “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica“.

My pick was “Birdwatcher” by Garth Upshaw.

And the non-fiction feature is “Of Dice and Men: Modern Fantasists and the Influence of Role Playing Games” by Jay Ridler and Justin Howe.

So get to clickin’ and enjoy your afternoon of twitching, giggling, hand-flapping self-stim glee!

Does that last sentence sound a little suspect to anyone else? Thanks, Nick!

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Subterranean Online has a new Mike Resnick story - the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones once again encounters his nemesis in “Connoisseurs”.

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Are you ready for episode 6 of Shadow Unit? “Endgames” was penned (or more likely typed) by Emma Bull:

As he walked the hall between Shadow Unit and the more public spaces of the BAU, Stephen Reyes pinched the bridge of his nose and slid his fingers hard down the ridge of each eyebrow, trying to push away his headache. He’d use both hands, but he had the case jacket in his right. The cause of the headache, those documents.

Bureaucracies would kill and eat you like any other monster. Just not quite so literally.

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Jake Frievald of Flash Fiction Online dropped us a note about this month’s edition:

“It’s that time of the month again - we just went live on Flash Fiction Online with new free stories. The highlight for sci fi fans is Bruce McAllister’s “Game”. I like the other stuff, too, though. :)”

Cheers, Jake!

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And speaking of Flash Fiction … is that the march of the Fictioneers I hear?

There are a number of troops on leave - yours truly is focussing on longer stories for a while, Justin Pickard is in dissertation hell, Jay Lake is convalescing (get well soon, Jay!) and Gareth D Jones is excused for having sold a piece of fiction to Nature magazine - but there’s still the steady stomp of boots on the parade-ground asphalt:

Plus we have new recruits. Sarah Ellender and Gaie Sebold will be posting on alternate Fridays over at their PlotMedics site; Gaie goes first with “Folie a Deux“.

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And that’s about everything from the immense sprawl of the interwebs, as far as free fiction is concerned. Don’t forget to send us your plugs and tip-offs - and have a great weekend!


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SOLITUDE RIPPLES FROM THE PAST by David Reagan

Paul Raven @ 01-05-2008

It’s that time of month again, when we at Futurismic unleash another fine piece of fresh short science fiction on an unsuspecting internet.

This time it’s the turn of Futurismic repeat offender David Reagan, who delivers a story about where the ultimate results of China’s one-child policy might lead her people - “Solitude Ripples From the Past”.

Don’t forget to leave David some feedback in the comments, and then go and check out his saucy Futurismic début, “Only The Neck Down“. But first …

Solitude Ripples From The Past

by David Reagan

1984

Qui Nuoshui finished her breakfast with grim determination, though she suspected her stomach would soon rebel. Her husband read the paper and paid her no heed, so he asked no uncomfortable questions about diminished appetite.

As he did every morning, Qui Changbo looked from the newspaper to his watch and grunted in mock surprise. “Oh, dear, I must hurry or I will miss my train,” he said. He folded the paper and tucked it under his arm, picked up his briefcase and hustled for the door. He made a slight detour to peck Nuoshui on the forehead and then was gone.

Nuoshui knew his bustling nature was hollow — her husband took a later train than he claimed. Every morning, he walked down a narrow alley, knocked on an anonymous door, and spent an hour playing The Game of the White Dove. She resented his unneeded lie most mornings — his gambling was of no concern as long as he continued to provide — but today she relaxed at seeing him leave.

Already her stomach gurgled, and she knew that even this morning’s small meal would soon reappear.
She hurried to the bathroom and made it just in time.

Even after vomiting, her eyes streaming and stomach muscles strained, Nuoshui smiled. Soon she would be a mother. Continue reading “SOLITUDE RIPPLES FROM THE PAST by David Reagan”


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Friday Free Fiction for 25th April

Paul Raven @ 25-04-2008

Greetings, fiction fans - Friday means freebies!

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Before we get going with the linkage, it’s worth pointing out that Wednesday was the first anniversary of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. What that means in real terms is that there’s bucket-loads of extra free fiction from all manner of writers spattered all over the intarwebs, and it’s all collected in one convenient LiveJournal Community.

I’ve not checked it out yet (I kinda phear t3h LiveJournal, as I imagine it has the power to erode the last few precious hours of free time I have), but I think we can safely assume that’ll be a real rabbit-hole for fiction fans. Please report back if you find anything particularly good in there that deserves a link of its own!

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OK, so back to the usual suspects. It’s just the one from Manybooks.net this week:

  • “Daughters of Doom” by Herbert B. Livingston (“Deep in space lay a weird and threatening world. And it was there that Ben Sessions found the evil daughters . . .” Mwuah-hah-hah-haaaah!)

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Nathan Lilly dropped me a note to remind us all that part 2 of A R Yngve’s “A Man Called Mister Brown” is online at SpaceWesterns.com this week, along with some non-fictional stuff about BSG.

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Another new piece goes up over at Subterranean Online - “Your Collar” by Elizabeth Bear.

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I have stumbled upon (and added to the sidebar) another online fiction outlet called Lone Star Stories, which I discovered thanks to the effusive praise Jeremiah Tolbert had for “The Wreck of the Grampus” by Jeremy Adam Smith.

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There’s another teaser/deleted scene piece (which all seem to get filed under the excellent ‘WTF BBQ’ category) over at Shadow Unit:

“Lau was a Valley Girl, dammit. She could figure out how to use a simple gas grill.

And that was half the problem. She could figure out how to use a simple gas grill, and that was not what this was. This looked like the navigation panel on the Starship Enterprise, and not the Sulu-era one with the slider and a couple of nonfunctional push buttons in primary colors, either.”

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Small Beer Press have evidently developed a taste for this free Creative Commons downloads business. This week they’ve set free Maureen F McHugh’s short story collection Mothers & Other Monsters:

“… in her luminous, long-awaited début collection, award-winning novelist Maureen F. McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations.”

Sounds good to me! That said, so does a small beer … it is Friday, after all!

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I got an email from a chap called Michael Roberts, who says:

“Back in January I wrote a little novelette which is probably not too publishable (or so I read; at 8743 words it’s really too long to put in a magazine). So I figured, why not put it online? And so I finally got off my figurative butt and did so. Now if I could only think of a good title …”

For future reference, Michael, there’s plenty of venues for fiction that length - so you’ll know for next time. If you go and read it, be sure to drop Michael a suggestion for his title!

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Which brings us round to the march of the Friday Flash Fictioneers!

  • Martin McGrath just missed the post last week with “King Rook“
  • Mind you don’t cut yourself on Jay Lake’s “Shard“.
  • Greg O’Byrne has an “Interstellar” fragment.
  • Neil Beynon’s forty-second piece (he’s only ever missed roll-call once, IIRC) is called “Precious“.
  • Shaun C Green has reached a “Turning Point“.
  • Gareth D Jones gets all nostalgic in “Gone With The Window“.
  • And finally yours truly humbly offers you “Magic Eyes“.

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And that’s about your lot - I reckon the IPSTPD community should provide more than enough material to be going on with. So until next week, keep your eyes and ears peeled for more free fiction on the web, and drop us a line with your tips!

Have a great weekend, too.


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Burst Fiction is Futurismic Flash

Paul Raven @ 21-04-2008

Writing in a notebookThe longer I work on Futurismic, the more free fiction outlets I discover - I never imagined there could be so many, and I’m sure there are plenty more waiting to be unearthed*. [image by apesara]

I bumped into a guy called Eric Chevalier over at Warren Ellis’s Whitechapel forums, and he told me about his Burst Fiction project. Burst Fiction is:

“[a]n active e-zine of one shot short stories, around 1000 characters in length, set in near contemporary times but with scifi tendencies.“

Sound familiar? It’s like a combination of Futurismic’s submission guidelines and the Friday Flash Fiction format! So get yourselves over to Burst Fiction and hoover up some crumbs of story from the metaphorical carpet of the intarwubs. Writer-types, take note - they’re looking for more content, too.

Also recommended, this time by Eric “Saijo City” Rice, is QuillPill.com, which is essentially a Twitter-equivalent for fiction writing (or journal keeping). That’s probably oversimplifying it a little, but I’ve not yet had a chance to test it out for myself - if you have a look (or have used it already), maybe you’d let us know what it’s like?

[ * And you do know that if you find one yourself, you should drop us a line so we can add it to the Sidebar Of Justice, right? ]


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Friday Free Fiction for 18th April

Paul Raven @ 18-04-2008

Here we go again with your weekly round-up of free fiction on the web …

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From Manybooks.net:

  • “Space Platform” by Murray Leinster (”When young Joe Kenmore came to Bootstrap to install pilot gyros in the Platform he hadn’t bargained for sabotage or murder or love. But Joe learned that ruthless agents were determined to wreck the project. He found that the beautiful girl he loved, and men like The Chief, a rugged Indian steelworker, and Mike, a midget who made up for his size by brains, would have to fight with their bare hands to make man’s age old dream of space travel come true!” Can you fight political disinterest with your bare hands, then?)
  • “The Penal Cluster” by Gordon Randall Garrett (”Tomorrow’s technocracy will produce more and more things for better living. It will produce other things, also; among them, criminals too despicable to live on this earth. Too abominable to breathe our free air.” O NOES!)
  • “The Planet Strappers” by Raymond Z Gallun (”The Planet Strappers started out as The Bunch, a group of student-astronauts in the back room of a store in Jarviston, Minnesota. They wanted off Earth, and they begged, borrowed and built what they needed to make it. They got what they wanted - a start on the road to the stars - but no one brought up on Earth could have imagined what was waiting for them Out There!” No kidding, they have Starbucks here too?)
  • “Trouble on Titan” by Arthur K Barnes (”When the Queen of the Spaceways meets the King of the Interplanetary Wilds, there’s a checkmate in the stalking of Saturn’s most dangerous game!”)
  • “The Delegate From Venus” by Henry Slesar (”Everybody was waiting to see what the delegate from Venus looked like. And all they got for their patience was the biggest surprise since David clobbered Goliath.”)
  • “No Moving Parts” by Murray F Yaco

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News from Small Beer Press:

“To celebrate the publication of his first new collection of short stories in ten years, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, John Kessel and Small Beer Press have made it available as a free download in various completely open formats with no Digital Rights Management (DRM) strings attached. An astonishing, long-awaited collection of stories that intersect imaginatively with Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, and Flannery O’Connor. Includes John Kessel’s modern classic “Lunar Quartet” sequence about life on the moon.”

Sounds good to me.

***

Two updates from John Joseph Adams from beneath his F&SF hat. Firstly there’s news about Daryl Gregory:

“Daryl’s website features a number of pieces of free fiction, including several F&SF stories - such as his first pro sale, “In the Wheels,” “The Continuing Adventures of Rocket Boy,” and “Free, and Clear.”"

And then some news about Peter Beagle:

“Peter S. Beagle is the author of many novels and stories, including the beloved classic The Last Unicorn. In 2005, F&SF published Beagle’s Nebula Award-winning sequel to The Last Unicorn, the novelette “Two Hearts”.”

I adored the movie of The Last Unicorn as a child (I can still get surprisingly emotional over it now), and I was gutted when I found out how badly shafted Beagle was on the deal. Go read his story.

***

The gang at Subterranean Press are churning out the Spring 2008 issue of Subterranean Online. Available so far:

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An email arrived from Nathan Lilly:

“Just a brief note to announce SpaceWesterns.com’s first full year of publication. The new year brings:

  • a creative refresh of the home page
  • the launch of our blog, The Sideshow
  • the creation of a (nearly) complete Space Western list.

All that in addition to the publication of Space Western stories and articles. This week we’ve [re-]published “Craphound” by Cory Doctorow, and part 1 of an eight-part serial titled “A Man Called Mister Brown” by A.R. Yngve. Next week we have an interview with David Weddle, screenwriter for Battlestar Galactica.”

Sounds like it’s all go over there - good luck, Nathan!

***

The still-websiteless-but-eternally-diligent-and-superbly-monickered Cole Kitchen continues to keep us abreast of webzine developments:

  • Helix SF has recently published Issue #8 for Spring 2008
  • Abyss & Apex has done the same with their twenty-fifth issue.

Also a couple of new titles (now added to the Sidebar Of Justice)

  • RevolutionSF (tag-lined “Tough Love for Sci-Fi” … there’s no tougher love than that horrible contraction, surely? ;) )
  • Bewildering Stories (which, once you get past the bewildering pre-millennial web-design, appears to have a great deal of content stored away)

Cheers, Cole!

***

Shadow Unit is up to episode 5 with “Ballistic“, a team effort from Sarah Monette, Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear & Amanda Downum.

“You aren’t supposed to be in Grandma’s room when she isn’t there. It’s dark inside, the heavy curtains drawn tight, and the air smells of camphor and lavender potpourri and furniture polish. Your stomach feels too small as you peer through the cracked-open door, like it did when Tommy Wilson dared you to crawl into that abandoned woodshed all full of spiders. Making Grandma mad scares you more than spiders, but this morning she went to the store and left you alone watching cartoons and eating Cocoa Puffs.”

***

Jayme Lynn Blaschke has the tenth instalment of the irregular yet intriguing “Memory”.

“Chaos erupted among the moironteau. The predatory discipline organizing the creatures broke down in the face of thirty quarry. Moironteau lunged and slashed, footheads choming wildly at the darting green Parrics flying to and fro. Those hanging above dropped into the fray, the lure of the chase too tempting to resist. The carefully-constructed trap collapsed into itself.

“Stupiding otherwhereians,” muttered Parric from his coiled position in the middle of it all. “All muscle, no finessing.”"

***

Sir John of Scalzi is getting all DOS-prompt-retro on us by going the shareware route with a piece of fiction:

“Starting right this very second, a (zipped) pdf version of “How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story” is available for you to read and enjoy. I’m offering it as shareware - that is, it’s free to read, but if you like it, you’re encouraged to send a little money my way. How much? Up to you (but, you know. Not too much. It’s a short story, not a novel).”

***

Via SFCanada, we hear that Nina Munteanu has posted her short story “A Butterfly in Peking” online.

***

Jay Lake dips into his seemingly bottomless pit of previously published short fiction once again:

“The current installment in this series is my short story “Small Magic“. At 5,600 words, this originally appeared in Weird Tales #340 (May/June 2006). It has never been reprinted elsewhere. If you like the story, please consider supporting Weird Tales. Trivium: the initial inspiration for this story was the Sting song “All This Time”.)”

***

The Friday Flash Fictioneers are back in action once again - though yours truly is using double shifts at the day-job as his cop-out excuse once again.

***

A final non-fiction bonus - and if Futurismic has any creationist readers, they may wish to skip ahead right over this one. Via Cosmos Magazine, we hear that the complete collection of Charles Darwin’s papers are online. SRSLY - all of them:

“”This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free,” said John van Wyhe, the director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online project.”

Blimey.

***

Well, that’s your lot for this week - there should be more than enough there to keep you busy over the weekend, I figure. Don’t forget that we’re always looking for tip-offs and plugs from you, our readers, so just drop us a line via the contact page.

In the meantime - have a great weekend, folks!


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Friday Free Fiction for 11th April

Paul Raven @ 11-04-2008

It’s a thin week for free fiction, which probably shouldn’t be entirely surprising after last week’s mammoth batch. There’s still a little for you to get your teeth into, though:

***

Only the one from Manybooks.net, but it’s by a classic author: “The Happy Unfortunate” by Robert Silverberg. (”Dekker, back from space, found great physical changes in the people of Earth; changes that would have horrified him five years before. But now, he wanted to be like the rest–even if he had to lose an eye and both ears to do it.” Sheesh - the price of conformity, eh?)

***

Lesley Smith dropped us a line to let us know about ElectricSpec, an three-times-yearly online speculative fiction webzine that has now been added to the Futurismic Sidebar Of Justice. Cheers, Lesley!

***

Via the Iain (M) Banks website comes news that UK newspaper The Independent has teamed up with Audible.co.uk to provide a free-to-download audiobook version of Iain Banks’s first published novel, The Wasp Factory.

I will point out that it’s not a science fiction novel, but go on to say that it’s an excellent story anyway and well worth your time. It also has one of the best twist endings EVER. Go get it!

***

The irrepressible Hal Duncan has, in addition to some audio content, a long short story for you to download. In the man’s own words:

“Well, what we have is a previously unpublished novella, “Die! Vampire! Die!”. It’s 15,000 words (cause I don’t do anything by halves) of black humour, featuring some characters ye might well recognise from [Duncan's novels] VELLUM and INK, my gay Orpheus punk rock musical NOWHERE TOWN, and every other f*cking story they refuse to let me write without them worming their way into it.”

Roughly translated, that means it should be a riot to read.

***

Warren Ellis’s free Freakangels comic is up to episode 9, and is starting to get some good character complexity developing.

***

The ranks of the Friday Flash Fictioneers are filling out again. I’m pleading external obligations this week, but Dan Pawley is back (from the deepest internet-devoid reaches of, er, Bournemouth) with an extra-length piece called “Doing The Islands“.

Elsewhere, Gareth D Jones says “Now You See Me“, while Gareth L Powell lurks in the “Victoria Rooms“; Neil Beynon is watching “Pixies“, and Greg O’Byrne’s in the mood for “Tekepathic Love“; Jay Lake muses on “The Inertia of Corpses” while Clive Birnie has developed a serious fear of the UK healthcare system - “The NHS Was Trying To Kill Him“.

***

And that’s all for this week, boys and girls … but for me to remind you to keep sending us your tip-offs and plugs, of course. We’d rather people told us about things we already knew than miss out on something we didn’t, so drop us a line even if you think we’re already on the case!

In the meantime, have a good weekend.


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Futurismic re-opens to fiction submissions!

Paul Raven @ 05-04-2008

Yes indeed - you enquired, cajoled and begged, and the day has finally arrived - Futurismic is open to fiction submissions once again!

Chris East, our hard-working Fiction Editor, is a busy man - and with the submissions coming in he’s going to be even more busy than usual. So please be considerate: read the entirety of the Guidelines page thoroughly - twice - and check your story is a good fit before clicking through to the submissions webform (linked from the Guidelines page).

That way you save Chris time and save yourself from a rejection you didn’t need to get, right? Right!

Also, a few words on file formatting. Three words, actually, or rather two words and an acronym:

RTF files only!

The webform shouldn’t let you upload anything else; if you manage to subvert the process, your submission will just be deleted anyway, so just convert in your favourite word processor package first.

And finally - we will ONLY accept fiction submissions through the webform. All attempted submissions by regular email, comment fields, Twitter, psychic projection, good old-fashioned snail-mail or any other channels WILL BE IGNORED AND DELETED/DESTROYED UNREAD AND UNREPLIED TO.

OK, with all that out of the way, get to work! Do you think you can beat Leonard Richardson’s 37-deep comments thread? Because that’s the caliber of work we’re looking for - and we’re looking forward to your submissions!


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Friday Free Fiction for 4th April

Paul Raven @ 04-04-2008

Free fiction fans should offer a moment’s praise for cloud computing and the wonders of Google Notebook … because thanks to a major hardware failure on my home computer, I’ve lost or misplaced a lot of things.

But not our FFF links, though - so read on for your weekly fix of free fiction!

***

First off we have a hefty selection form ManyBooks.net … I’ve started including some of the ledes and excerpt, because they are hilarious:

  • “Second Landing” by Floyd Wallace - (”A gentle fancy for the Christmas Season - an oft-told tale with a wistful twistful of Something that left the Earth with a wing and a prayer.” Smell the schmaltz!)
  • “Survival Tactics” by Al Sevcik - (”The robots were built to serve Man; to do his work, see to his comforts, make smooth his way. Then the robots figured out an additional service - putting Man out of his misery.” O NOES!!11)
  • “Man Made” by Albert Teichner - (”A story that comes to grips with an age-old question - what is soul? and where? - and postulates an age-new answer.”)
  • “A Matter of Magnitude” by Al Sevcik - (”When you’re commanding a spaceship over a mile long, and armed to the teeth, you don’t exactly expect to be told to get the hell out…”)
  • “Control Group” by Roger Dee - (”"Any problem posed by one group of human beings can be resolved by any other group.” That’s what the Handbook said. But did that include primitive humans? Or the Bees?”)
  • “The Outlaws of Mars” by Otis Adelbert Kline
  • “Longevity” by Therese Windser - (”A morality tale - 1960 style.”)
  • “The Deadly Daughters” by Winston K Marks - (”These gorgeous fanatics were equally at home with men, murder, or matrimony, and they used all three with amazing success.” LOL - paging Doctor Freud …)
  • “The Gift Bearer” by Charles Louis Fontenay - (”This could well have been Montcalm’s greatest opportunity; a chance to bring mankind priceless gifts from worlds beyond. But Montcalm was a solid family man - and what about that nude statue in the park?”)
  • “The Perfectionists” by Arnold Castle - (”Is there something wrong with you? Do you fail to fit in with your group? Nervous, anxious, ill-at-ease? Happy about it? Lucky you!”)
  • “The Sun King” by Gaston Derreaux - (”The people of Par’si’ya forgot their God, and worshipped only murder, and sin. But then the virgin Too-che gave birth to a male child …” Not quite the same as the song by The Cult, then.)

    • ***

    And one from Project Gutenberg:

    ***

    Lots of webzine news this week. Let’s see …

    Via regular correspondent Nancy Jane Moore:

    “You probably already know this, but just in case you missed it: The new issue (Vol. 2, No. 6 - titled Obscura) of Farrago’s Wainscot is up, with lots of nice stories.”

    Thanks, Nancy!

    ***

    As widely reported in all internet venues of good taste (but still worth noting in case you managed to miss it), Rudy Rucker announces the fifth issue of his irregular independent webzine Flurb:

    “This issue features a Beat SF story of mine in the form of letters from William Burroughs in Tangiers, excerpts of John Shirley’s lost cyberpunk novel Black Glass, Terry Bisson’s hilarious anti-mundane story “Captain Ordinary”, a Lovecraftian novella by Lavie Tidhar, a mystic travel guide to Upstate New York by Thom Metzger, and amazing pieces by new SF writers Alex Hardison, Brendan Byrne, and Nathaniel Hellerstein.”

    You can’t say fairer than that for free, can you?

    ***

    Nick Mamatas announces the latest edition of Clarkesworld Magazine in his inimitable manner:

    “You WILL believe a hippo and a panther have sex, in Jeff Ford’s “After Moreau”! You MUST believe that you can never be too rich or too thin, in Jeremiah Sturgill’s “Flight“! CAN you believe that Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw’s baby, so recently menaced by my jaws, sleeps through the night? Check out our feature commentary,”Not Now, Sweetie, Daddy’s Worldbuilding“.

    ***

    A new webzine discovery via the reviewers at The Fix Online has been added to the Sidebar Of Justice - AlienSkin:

    “Enter the world of Speculative Fiction. Journey through our virtual magazine and plunge into the strange and unusual. Inside you’ll find tales of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Leave your reality behind. Enter the realm of the unknown - where anything can happen.”

    Feel free to report back as to whether the fiction is less cliched than the intro! ;)

    ***

    Another email, this time from Will Hindmarch:

    “Futurismic fan and freelance writer here selfishly bringing your attention to some sci-fi fiction in the inaugural fiction issue of The Escapist, including a new story of mine. It’s all free to read, and some of it seems right up your alley. Thanks very much!”

    This is quite a big deal in some ways - The Escapist is a gamer’s webzine, and it’s interesting to see them experimenting with fiction. They have the advantage of an established audience and (I assume) a good regular ad income already … is this a possible future for short fiction markets? Regardless of that, well done Will, and thanks for the tip!

    ***

    Are you ready for the fourth episode of Shadow Unit? “A Handful of Dust” is by Will Shetterly.

    ***

    Gwyneth Jones is releasing more fiction to the intertubes: “The Tomb Wife” (a ghost story set on a non-duration starship called the Pirate Jenny) and “Saving Tiamaat” (a difficult issue for the Diaspora Parliament).

    ***

    From Futurismic alumnus and all-road quality chap Tobias Buckell:

    “The online magazine Baen’s Universe has my short story “Manumission” featured this month. This story has been years in waiting to be published, but is one of my favorites.”

    ***

    From Gary Gibson, just back from a writing holiday in Taipei (lucky bugger):

    “This story is called “The Ranch“. It’s a vampire horror story, be warned, written a few days after making the statement at the Glasgow SF Writer’s Circle that I hated vampire stories and there was nothing new or genuinely interesting that could possibly be done with them. By writing the story I quite possibly hoisted myself with my own petard but, at the same time, you know, the story is about why I hate vampire stories. Plus, I get to do a cheap willy gag.”

    ***

    Via John Joseph Adams (wearing his F&SF hat):

    “John Kessel has a number of podcasts available on his website for your listening pleasure. This includes the F&SF stories “Pride and Prometheus”, Part 1 & Part 2 and “Every Angel is Terrifying“, as well as others. His website also features some free fiction in HTML (prose) format, including the F&SF story “Herman Melville: Space Opera Virtuoso“.”

    ***

    Another teasing flashlet from Peter Watts - “Madonna and Child“:

    “This time I open my eyes to a familiar face I’ve never seen before: only a boy, early twenties perhaps, physiologically. His face is a little lopsided, the cheekbone flatter to the left than to right. His ears are too big. And while the eyes below his frown shine with their own bright intelligence, I know immediately that he is natural.”

    ***

    Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt teamed up on a story that’s now live at Chizine: “The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft“:

    “I drove a brand-new rental car I couldn’t afford—next year’s model, so in a way it was a car from the future—from the Amherst Amtrak stop and into the Vermont countryside, which was just as picturesque as all the calendar photos had led me to expect.”

    ***

    Jayme Lynn Blaschke delivers a ninth fragment of Memory at No Fear Of The Future:

    “Parric wheeled away as the moironteau spilled out of the gap. There were to many to outrun to the next gap–not with two wings struggling to keep the voilently fighting Flavius wrapped up and safe. He’d have to wait them out inside a dimensional pocket.”

    ***

    Another item from Jay Lake (whose sheer productivity and output never ceases to amaze me) - “G.O.D.“:

    “Gods died. Everyone understood that. János just didn’