Friday Free Fiction for 14th September

As we say here in the UK, “Cor blimey, guv’nor, wotta lotta free stuff!” Actually, there’s probably a grand total of twenty people on the face of the planet who’d even consider saying that, but the point remains – it’s a bumper crop of free fiction this week, and no mistake.

Manybooks.net just keeps on giving with the old-school classics:

Plus the Free Speculative Fiction Online gang have updated once again; lots of fresh meat for genre carnivores right there.

More modern stuff:

There’s a lot of taster excerpts about; Orbit Books has posted the first chapter of The Awakened Mage by Karen Miller, and SciFiChick has a list of thirteen (thirteen!) current genre titles with free excerpts available online in hope of hooking you into lashing out for the full book.

Chris Roberson has obviously been so impressed by our efforts here that he’s cloned the idea (it’s OK, Chris, we won’t sue! ;] ) and is doing his own Free Fiction Friday posts – his first offering is an excerpt from his out-of-print book Cybermancy Incorporated.

[link expunged]

Extra webcomic goodness – an online reworking of War Of The Worlds in comic form … which has the ultimate merit of being completely devoid of Tom Cruise. [via Ectoplasmosis]

And now, for the interminably busy, podcasts!

From Librivox, a 28-part audiobook version of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

If you like genre podcasts, you probably already know and love Escape Pod – but I wish to draw your special attention to Transcendence Express by Jetse de Vries, not just because he’s one of my fellow editors at Interzone, but because he’s a damn fine writer in his own right, and this is one of his best pieces of work.

And finally, if you’d like something bite-sized, there’s a growing clade of people doing a piece of flash fiction every Friday: Gareth L. Powell, Neil Beynon, Gareth D. Jones, Martin McGrath … and even yours truly.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

PS – compiling this list would be impossible without continual cribbing from the diligent chaps at SFSignal. If you like what we do here at Futurismic, you should definitely be subscribed to them, too.


Writers, editors and anyone else – if you want something you’ve written or published on the web for free mentioned here, drop me (Paul Raven) an email to the address listed for me on the Staff page, and I’ll include it in next week’s round-up.

14 thoughts on “Friday Free Fiction for 14th September”

  1. D’oh! I’d completely forgotten you used the words “free”, “Friday”, and “Fiction” as the title for your efforts, as well. I’m a subliminal thief!

  2. While you’re celebrating “free fiction” you might want to go over to Jerry Pournelle’s site to check up the dustup the SFWA is having with scribd.com.

    Some of the works you are citing just might be “pirated”

    But hey, it not like you’re taking the bread out of someone’s mouth. Except, that exactly what is happening.

  3. I’ve been following that particular dust-up, SciFan, and I’m well aware of the legal implications. However, if you actually take the time to check, all of the links above are either out-of-copyright books hosted on legal sites devoted to such things, or works provided by online magazine editors or the authors themselves.

    While piracy of books does indeed take place, I’d appreciate you checking whether or not I’m promoting pirated work before accusing me of doing so – and at least having the courage of your convictions and not doing so anonymously. Your concerns are legitimate; your sock-puppetry and lack of research, however, weaken your argument considerably.

  4. Yep, SciFan, we’re linking to online fiction in order to deprive writers. We hate writers here at Futurismic. That’s why we’ve been spending money out of pocket to buy their stories and publish them online for the past few years.

    What Paul said. And forgive me for finding your comment incredibly offensive.

  5. SciFan should go speak to Cory Doctorow and have it all explained to him properly.

    Free fiction PROMOTES the work of authors you may not otherwise hear about. I found out about Cory’s (frankly amazing) work through Futurismic, and just as soon as I’ve got a few spare bucks, I’m popping over to Amazon and making a purchase. Thousands more like me will continue to do the same.

    Oh, and guess what RIAA? We do it with music, too.

  6. Hejsa!

    Is there ever a “best of free fiction 2006”, e.g.? Or do you know of somebody who does that?

    While I love the idea of easy access to free SF, I often tire of reading through a lot of stuff, that’s not top quality. (I can read sub-genres I normally don’t like, if the quality is ok.) So a summation or something would really help me.

    Lise

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