Here’s your free fiction fix for the weekend:
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Speculative fiction e-zine Heliotrope issue #3 has been posted with fiction by Brendan Connell, Tina Connolly and Rob Vagle, as well as articles by Jeffrey Ford, Michael Moorcock and Jeff Vandermeer.
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From Andy Cox, head honcho (and my boss) at Interzone:
"Jay Lake has posted his story "All Our Heroes are Bastards", originally published in issue 35 of The Third Alternative (now Black Static), on his website. Recommended!"
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More fine freebies from the folk at Subterranean:
"The serial of Daniel Abraham‘s that we’re running this November, The Support Technician Tango, is definitely not sf. Think of Connie Willis in her madcap comic mode and you’ll be closer to the pleasures Tango has to offer. Look for a chapter or two every weekday over at Subterranean Online."
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Free science fiction online at ManyBooks.net: "Unwise Child" by Gordon Randall Garrett, "Tight Squeeze" by Dean Charles Ing and "Indirection" by Everett B. Cole.
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Mentioned here at Futurismic earlier this week, but worthy of a re-plug – the inimitable Bruce Sterling has a short story in a most untraditional venue. Read "The Interoperation" at Technology Review.
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Friday Flash Fictioneers in tha hiz-ouse!
Martin McGrath slipped in late last week with "Stone Must Roll" – technically a rule-breaker on length terms, but we’re all friends here.
Which means we’ll excuse also Shaun C Green for posting a 2500-word short called "Half-Day of the Dead". Because, as he points out, everything goes better with zombies.
Gareth D Jones cocks a snook at superheroes with "The Ironic Man"; he also posted a late catch-up earlier in the week called "The Planet Sweets".
Neil Beynon shares some backstory from his ongoing NaNoWriMo effort: "Hakon’s Folly".
Justin Pickard is also NaNoing (if that’s a real verb). His excerpt is called "Paper Boats in the Blue Hour".
Gareth L Powell has a bleak little nugget called "The Point Furthest From The Sun".
And in one of those strangely synchronistic happenstances, both Dan Pawley and myself hit on the same theme, albeit from different angles. Dan’s is called "Abduction", and mine is "Alien Abduction".
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As always, please get in touch (use my email address as on the Staff page) with anything you’d like to be announced … and please put "Futurismic Free Fiction" in the subject line. I’ve had to batten down the spam-traps recently, but I have a filter installed that will let through anything with that subject. If I don’t respond to your email, please try again, or leave a comment here if that doesn’t work.
In the meantime, enjoy your weekend!