It’s that time of week again! Here’s your free fiction to keep you busy over the weekend … or at work this afternoon, for those of you in the US! 🙂

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New old stories at ManyBooks.net: "The Stoker and the Stars" by Algis Budrys, "Gravity’s Angel" by Tom Maddox, "Toy Shop" by Harry Harrison, and "One-Shot" by James Blish.

And at Project Gutenberg: "Second Sight" by Alan E. Nourse.

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The unstoppably prolific Chris Roberson has a pretty hefty back-catalogue to draw on for his free fiction offerings: I missed last week’s "So Far From Us In All Ways" due to time restrictions, and this week there’s a chunk from his recently published novel Set The Seas On Fire, "A Fencing Lesson".

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An email from Nancy Jane Moore:

"I’m doing some serious blogging about self defense these days, and I
also happen to have a science fiction story — "Survival Skills" — that
illustrates some of my points."

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We’ve mentioned Strange Horizons more than a few times, but that’s not going to stop me doing it again, as Jason Stoddard (who has had stories published here at Futurismic and in loads of other venues) points out that one of his shorter pieces, the 4000-word "Making Payments", is up on SH right now.

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Friday Flashers in action this week: Gareth L Powell’s sliver of a story, "Fifty-Four Dodge"; Neil Beynon’s "The Anniversary", Shaun C Green’s racy and more than a trifle weird "Slip It In", and my own "I am a camera".

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As always – please get in touch with any announcements you’d like included here next time, be they stories, excerpts or podcasts. We don’t care about the format, as long as it’s free!