Friday Free Fiction for 30th May

It’s that time of week again, when thoughts turn to leaving the office, not working for a few days … and reading some stories. Here’s a whole bunch of good stuff to get your eyeballs tucked into.

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The weekly selection from Manybooks.net, including a couple of early pieces from sf legend Robert Silverberg:

  • Impact” by Irving Cox“They were languorous, anarchic, shameless in their pleasures . . . were they lower than man . . . or higher?”
  • The Nothing Equation” by Tom Godwin“The space ships were miracles of power and precision; the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage. Every detail had been checked and double checked; every detail except …”
  • Postmark Ganymede” by Robert Silverberg“Consider the poor mailman of the future. To “sleet and snow and dead of night”–things that must not keep him from his appointed rounds–will be added, sub-zero void, meteors, and planets that won’t stay put. Maybe he’ll decide that for six cents an ounce it just ain’t worth it.”
  • The Hunted Heroes” by Robert Silverberg“The planet itself was tough enough–barren, desolate, forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and dedicated. But they had to run head-on against a mad genius who had a motto: Death to all Terrans!” NOOOOO!
  • The Man Who Hated Mars” by Gordon Randall Garrett“To escape from Mars, all Clayton had to do was the impossible. Break out of a crack-proof exile camp–get onto a ship that couldn’t be boarded–smash through an impenetrable wall of steel. Perhaps he could do all these things, but he discovered that Mars did evil things to men; that he wasn’t even Clayton any more. He was only–THE MAN WHO HATED MARS.” NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!1

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Via SF Signal we discover another what seems to be some sort of alternative or addition to services like Manybooks.net that has a much slicker front-end, plus charts and all that web2.0 stuff.

The titles all look pretty familiar (lots of Doctorow and Stross) but you might want to go poke around the science fiction section of Feedbooks anyway. Just in case. 😉

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Via a number of places, but I think I spotted it at Scalzi‘s first (so that’s who I’m quoting):

“Australian science fiction writer Simon Hayes and Freemantle Publishing have posted the first of Hayes’s satirical Hal Spacejock novels online for you to download and try. Simon sends me copies of the series from time to time […] and they’re definitely fun, and (intentionally) humorous science fiction is hard enough to find as it is. Give it a look and if you like it, they’ll arrange to send you some actual books, at a discount of both the cover price and […] international postage.”

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Via Friday Flash Fictioneer Gareth D Jones:

“… a ‘Fiction Special’ issue of Wales-based ezine Estronomicon is now online for you to download, featuring ten short stories.”

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Missed this one last week: Captain Bruce Sterling recommends heading over to HarperCollins, where you can currently read the entirety of Invisible Armies by Jon Evans:

(((That’s a pretty good book, actually. It’s kind of a tough-as-nails technothriller from a leftie Seattle 99er perspective. People who aren’t morons and like thriller novels ought to read this.)))

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Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull have released the “season finale” novel Refining Fire over at Shadow Unit this week in daily instalments; I think the whole thing should be there by the weekend. If you’ve not checked it out yet, there’s quarter of a million words of free fiction there now – and that’s just the first season.

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Via Lou Anders, there’s a neatly collated selection of free-to-read sample chapters over at Pyr Books.

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Michael Roberts slips in just behind the cut-off deadline with another Tale of the Singularity: “Lord Cthulhu Walks the Desert“.

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And finally, your selection from the Friday Flash Fictioneers:

  • Phred Serenissima‘s story from last week is “Garden Variety“; this week’s is called “Choices“.
  • Gareth D Jones decries the ravages of war (and drugs) in “The Hastening of Battle“.
  • Neil Beynon proves that you can get inspiration from blog posts here at Futurismic in “Touched
  • Don’t worry; Shaun C Green‘s “Spacemanisn’t a cover version of the old 4 Non Blondes track.
  • Gaie Sebold gets all po-mo with “Little Red Hoodie

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That’s your dose for the week, folks – should be enough to keep you going. Don’t forget to feed us your tips, plugs and suggestions as always. Have a great weekend!