After last week’s short shrift, we return with another bumper crop of free fiction. Eyes down for a full house …

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From Futurismic blogger Ed Willett (who’s off treading the boards in a production of Beauty And The Beast at the moment), a special recommendation:

Brett Alexander Savory’s collection No Further Messages and his novel The Distance Travelled are available to download in full from his bibliography page at ChiZine.

They are indeed – cheers Ed! ChiZine is in the sidebar, but we’re more than happy to announce special recommendations from Futurismic readers even if they’re located somewhere we’ve mentioned before. Drop us a line, and share your under-rated favourites with the world!

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And in the same spirit, a recommendation from Jeremy Tolbert:

Fantasy continues to please me with this week’s story, “Possession”. There are some nicely odd worldbuilding touches and even some steampunk elements. You have to kind of appreciate a story that takes place entirely inside a gigantic hole.

Leave the Freudian analysis alone, folks.

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I got mail! From Nancy Jane Moore, to be precise:

The folks at Farrago’s Wainscot have finally given Behind the Wainscot – where they publish short-shorts and other oddities between the regular quarterly issues of Farrago’s Wainscot [also in the sidebar, folks!] – its own website. These stories were online before, but a little hard to find. Now those craving an interstitial fix can gorge on them all at once.

Cheers, Nancy!

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Via lots of people:

Weird Tales has a new website, and there’s free fiction to be had there, too – as well as non-fiction and lots of other webby rich-media type malarkey. Get to it!

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Chris Roberson fans, prepare to rejoice!

First spotted at Iain Emsley‘s Yatterings blog (but plenty of other places since then):

Those excellent folk over at Solaris have started publishing chapters from Chris Roberson’s forthcoming novel, Three Unbroken, on their website for free. The actual paperbook will appear in 2009.

And from Roberson himself, another Friday freebie: “The Likeness Of A Wolf“.

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Jay Lake is posting up free stories, too:

The current installment in this series is a short-short entitled “A Conspiracy of Dentists.” At 800 words of length, this originally appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebd Wristlet, #14 June, 2004 [ Tangent Online Review ]. It has not been reprinted before now.
This is based on something that actually happened to me as a teenager, when we were clearing out my grandparents’ house after the death of my Granddaddy Lake. A bit more detail is available here. If you like this story, please consider supporting Small Beer Press and LCRW. In any case, enjoy.

A conspiracy of dentists? Has to be a horror story, surely …

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Hello, Paul McAuley:

I’ve just put up my short story “Interstitial“ on [my] web site. It’s an end-of-the-world story that takes off from the theory that life had survived at least one bottleneck caused by a runaway effect that created a snowball Earth and ends in the kind of conflict between the military and scientists that powered most 1950’s sci-fi movies, with a tip of the hat to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Imagine it in scratchy black-and-white, with John Agar playing the hero.

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Those folk at Subterranean just keep rolling it out:

We’re closing out the Fall Issue of Subterranean Online in the next week or so. Among the features just posted are a short, dark tale by Caitlin R. Kiernan, “In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection,” and the final travails of the madcap characters in Daniel Abraham’s screwball serial, “The Support Technician Tango”

In the Winter issue, look for a novella by Thomas M. Disch, plus short stories by Michael Bishop, Tia V. Travis, Mike Resnick (surprise, a Lucifer Jones tale!) as well as hot new writer Rachel Swirsky.

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Welcome to the realm of Flash (ah-aaaaah!) …

First of all, a piece I found via Warren Ellis: Simon Bisson‘s “Getting in is easy. Getting out is the hard bit.“

A feral Matrioshka Brain is a dangerous place. The wild evolution of self-replicating machines makes it a playground for Darwin – and deadly for anyone that tries to venture in. But if you’re scavenging the ruins of dead civilisations, there’s really no other place to go.

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And a new recruit of sorts. Brendan Adkins writes:

I’ve only just discovered Futurismic, and I’m happy to be learning for
the first time about the Friday Flash Fictioneers.  I’ve been writing
stories of exactly 101 words every weekday since 2003 and posting them at xorph.com/anacrusis/, so I’m embarrassingly enthusiastic about this kind of stuff (and everything else you post in your roundups).  Thanks for providing such an interesting service!

We do our best, Brendan – but it pales against your flash output! After receiving Brendan’s email, I started doing a mental calculation of how many words of flash he must have produced in that time period, but I had to stop because my brain couldn’t handle the number of decimal places.

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And so, to the regular irregulars, those fine and forthright Friday Flash Fictioneers …

• Sean C Green is playing catch-up this week – the excellent “Vote Now!” appeared over last weekend.
• Martin McGrath is back in the saddle after server problems and illness, but he’s taking no prisoners – only “Rum and Slaves“.
• Gareth L Powell is back to full strength again, too – here’s his “Dead Twin“.
• Gareth D Jones is gonna get all palendromic on your ass: “Time Did Emit“.
• Dan Pawley sees something spooky among the bookshelves … it’s “The Library Visitor“.
• And here’s a little something from yours truly – a tale of shock, horror, and jealous kitchen appliances: “The New Arrival“.

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Oh, good grief! Is that not enough for you?

OK, so try some non-fiction, via Jason Ellis: the classic Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway.

What, you still want more? Well, if this doesn’t keep you busy, nothing ever will. Via SF Signal:

The Universal Digital Library has completed the digitization of 1.5 million books and on Tuesday made them free and publicly available.

One and a half million? I think you’ll survive until next Friday on that little lot.

In the meantime, we’re always happy to receive tip-offs and recommendations of free fiction online, new or old, as long as it’s all legal. So drop me a line if you’ve got something to share.

Have a good weekend!