Greetings, free fiction aficionados! We’ve got a pretty hefty batch here in compensation for my absence last week, so let’s get straight to it …

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Just a few from Manybooks.net:

“The Chamber Of Life” by Green Peyton Wertenbaker

“Nine Hard Questions About The Nature Of the Universe” by Lewis Shiner

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By comparison, the folk at Feedbooks have been busy beavers, and there’s enough here to keep you going for weeks, from proto-sf classics to pulp-era shorts. There are not only short stories …

• “The Cosmic Expense Account” by Cyril Michael Kornbluth
• “Creatures of Vibration” by Harl Vincent
• “Criminal Negligence” by J Francis McComas
• “A Crystal Age” by William Henry Hudson
• “Cubs Of The Wolf” by Raymond Fisher Jones
• “The Circuit Riders” by R C Fitzpatrick
• “The Heads Of Cerberus” by Francis Stevens
• “The Case of Summerfield” by William Henry Rhodes
• “Cat and Mouse” by Ralph Williams
• “Breaking Point” by James Edwin Gunn
• “Breakaway” by Stanley Gimble
• “The Blue Tower” by Evelyn E Smith
• “Blessed Are The Meek” by G C Edmonson
• “Beyond Pandora” by Robert J Martin
• “The Bell Tone” by Edmund H Leftwich
• “The Beast Of Space” by F E Hardart
• “Attrition” by Jim Wannamaker
• “Accidental Death” by Peter Baily
• “Star-begotten” by H G Wells

… but full novels, too:

• VRIL – The Power of the Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• Born Again by Alfred William Lawson
• Almuric by Robert E Howard
• The Blind Spot by Austin Hall
• Planetoid 127 by Edgar Wallace
• The Missing Angel by Erle Cox
• Out Of The Silence by Erle Cox

Crikey!

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Via SF Signal, there’s a veritable festival of Edgar Rice Burroughs at Project Gutenberg:

• A Princess of Mars
• Warlord of Mars
• Thuvia, Maid of Mars
• Return of Tarzan
• Son of Tarzan
• Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
• Tarzan of the Apes

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A message hit the inbox from dj lotu5:

I think that this story I wrote – “Tissue Banking” – is about what Futurismic is about: the uncanny similarity between the future and the present. I’m a transgender artist, blogger and trouble maker, and I blog about the interplay of technology, transgender, sex and resistance.

Thanks, dj!

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Via Gareth D Jones, a new addition the the sidebar o’ justice: Concept SciFi webzine

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Warren Ellis makes a proclamation:

With the aid of the Colleen Doran Creator’s Grant, Kieron Gillen and Charity Larrison have completed their darkly magical graphic novel Busted Wonder, which you can read in its entirely online for free at bustedwonder.com.

You must go and read it now.

Obey the Ellis!

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From the High Lord of Free, Cory Doctorow:

For the 150th anniversary issue of The Bookseller […] the editors commissioned me to write a short-short story about the next 150 years of book sales. The result is called The Right Book, and it’s out in the current edition and online [first two pages, third page] as well.

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The increasingly ubiquitous Fantasy Book Spot is hosting a teaser chapter of Ken MacLeod‘s forthcoming novel The Night Sessions:

He slowed and dismounted fifty metres from the obstruction. A slope of rubble sprawled halfway across the road. The lower half of the front of a tenement block had been blasted out. Two floors had collapsed. No vehicles had been crushed, but the wreckage of several collisions remained slewed in the road. Ferguson hadn’t seen anything like this in real life for a long time, and now seldom even on television. He took off his cycle clips, pushed the bike one-handed and stared ahead. After a step or two he remembered the weight on his back.

Looking forward to that one – MacLeod novels rarely disappoint me.

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke is up to instalment sixteen of Memory:

Bolts of green flame spewed from the cuayabs.

Quite!

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Here are the Friday Flash Fictioneer pieces from last week which were delayed by my gallivanting out of town:

• “Lefty Turquoise” by Sarah Ellender
• “Cat” by Ian Hocking
• “Energia City” by Phred Serenissima
• “Skyflowers” by Shaun C Green

And just to make everyone feel like total amateurs, Gareth D Jones offers his now-published-in-Nature piece – you can see “Travel By Numbers” in all its native (or should that be Natural?) glory.

And here’s this week‘s Friday Flash material:

• Gareth L Powell‘s off to the “Carnival“
• Dan Pawley returns after a lengthy hiatus; turns out he was “Tidying Up The Garden“
• Neil Beynon is experiencing a short swift “Descent“
• Gareth D Jones has been eating “Redcurrants“
• Shaun C Green has been “Releasing Moments“
• Gaie Sebold shares some “Works of Art“
• Phred Serenissima salutes “The Blue Eagle“

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And that’s your lot – if that huge stack from Feedbooks can’t keep you occupied for a while, you must be some sort of reading machine. Don’t forget to make time to drop us in your tips and plugs for next week, though – deadline is 1730 hours GMT.

Have a great weekend!