It’s the highlight of your week! It’s the blog-post that you seek! It strips the breath out of your lungs and makes your knees go weak! It’s … Friday Free Fiction!

(OK, so maybe I’ve been a little short on sleep this week. Don’t mind me – the links are good even if the filler isn’t, right? 🙂 )

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Manybooks.net provides us with stories from the really old-school …

• “The Unnecessary Man” by Randall Garrett
• “The Golden Judge” by Nathaniel Gordon
• “The Helpful Robots” by Robert J. Shea

…to the new-school:

• “Scratch Monkey” by Charles Stross (1993)
• “Agnosis” by Darren R. Hawkins (2008).

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Alastair Reynolds, in case you’re not familiar with the name, is one of Britain’s top-grade space opera writers. He’s just made an excerpt from House of Suns, his latest novel, available to read on his website.

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Time moves so fast – there’s already another issue of Clarkesworld Magazine!

This one has fiction from Stephen Graham Jones and Alexander Lumans; non-fiction from Richard Bowes, and Futurismic alumni Tobias Buckell interviewing Catherynne M. Valente.

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From Edward Schubert (via Slushmaster, and also by email from Dutch man-mountain and Interzone fiction editor Jetse de Vries):

To Readers of Science Fiction and Fantasy everywhere,

When you have something great, you want everyone to know. So you tell people about it. You share it. You pass it along to friends everywhere. Well, that’s what we’re doing with InterGalactic Medicine Show. We want to make sure everyone has had a chance to check out what we’re doing, so we’re offering up a sampling of our stories – for free.

During the month of February we are going to make one story from each of our first four issues available at no charge. Two stories will be set free on February 1^st, and two more on February 15^th. Just visit www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com and explore the table of contents; the free stories will be clearly marked.

What are you waiting for? Go take a look!

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Steven Brust emailed to tell me that his entire Firefly novel My Own Kind of Freedom is available on his website.

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The BBC has let loose a whole bunch of free Doctor Who eBooks at their website – the old-school ones, too (much better than the latest incarnation, IMHO – though YMMV).

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Free audio fiction (Geordie style): the Starship Sofa‘s latest audio story is Pat Murphy‘s “Going Through Changes“.

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Well, look at us getting all cosmopolitan! We received our first FFF submission from Denmark from Lise Andreason: “A Meeting“.

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Friday Free Fiction just wouldn’t be the same with the Friday Flash Fictioneers, now would it?

And I’m immensely proud to announce that Jay Lake appears to have taken me up on my invitation to join in. However, due to the wonders of timezones, it appears he posts his work long after this UK-based editor has gone to bed.

But so what if we link them a week later? Here’s last week’s offering: “Passive Voices” by Jay Lake.

(The good Mr Lake also let loose a poem entitled “Evolution In Action” this week, which I don’t think is quite as bad as he’s making it out to be.)

Another guest appearance emerged last Sunday from Dr Ian Hocking in the form of “The Pilgrim” – no idea if he’s going regular with flash or if that was just a one off. We’ll keep you posted.

Which brings us to the usual suspects: Gareth D Jones is caught in a “White-Out“, while Neil Beynon is waiting until “After The Rain” and Gareth L Powell is headed for “Woomera“.

Greg O’Byrne thinks he has located “Nirvana“, Shaun C Green has written a “Love Story” and Dan Pawley has been “Found In Evidence“.

And finally, yours truly found himself with an “Unwanted Passenger“.

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And there you have it – that should keep you busy for a little while, I’m guessing. In the mean time, don’t forget to send us your tips and notifications about free fiction in the wild – blatant self-pimping more than welcome.

Have a great weekend!