Well, my guess is most of you are more focused on dressing up Halloween-style and hitting the town tonight than wondering where your next fix of free fiction is coming from. But no seasonal holiday can stand in the way of Futurismic‘s relentless cataloguing of free genre stuff to read on the intertubes, so you’ll at least have something with which to sooth away the hangovers tomorrow afternoon… 🙂

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Here’s a few from Feedbooks:

• “The Day Time Stopped Moving” by Bradner Buckner
• “Hellhound of the Cosmos” by Clifford D. Simak
• “The Risk Profession” by Donald Edwin Westlake

And another item from the Futurismic back-catalogue, the ultra-dark super-snark of Alex Wilson‘s “Dry Frugal with Death Rays“.

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News from John “Electric Velocipede” Klima:

In case you’re wondering about what the contents of the new issue are like, here’s a quick sampler:

• “The Oldest Man on Earth” by Patrick O’Leary
• “Sitting Round the Stewpot” by Patricia Russo
• “Notes on the Dissection of the Imaginary Beetle” by Jonathan Wood

There will more to come from the issue. You can check out the full table of contents, which has links to excerpts from all the fiction and poetry in the issue.

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Via a number of sources, both blogs and email (so blanket thanks to everyone!), Technology Review recently ran a short story called “Glass” by Daryl Gregory.

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Another rogue DVD extra just cropped up at Shadow Unit.

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Via the eternally vigilant SF Signal:

Afterburn SF has published “Vigilant” by Mike Rimar.

MindFlights has published “Good News from a Foreign Land” by Diane Gallant.

And there’s a selection of four from Aberrant Dreams:

• “Souling Night” by Kelly Dunn
• “The Girl Who Swallowed the Sky” by Jacqueline Bowen
• “Metal” by Larry Dunn
• “The Bloodstone Queen” by Verna McKinnon

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This week’s story at Strange Horizons is “Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman.

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Tor.com has a free story called “A Water Matter” by Futurismic alumnus (and all-round jolly nice chap) Jay Lake.

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Via Forbidden Planet International:

Dominic Green, an author some may remember from his appearances in the august pages of that pillar of the literary SF community, Interzone, is giving up on trying to get novels published. Despite his Interzone credentials and a Hugo nomination in 2006 he’s had no luck with most publishers (a plight I’m sure many writers will empathise with) and has decided to post them online, free, so at least perhaps some readers can have a look and hopefully enjoy them. There are two adult works – Abaddon and Smallworld – and a young adult work, Saucers and Gondoliers.

That’s presumably not the same Dominic Green who was my former landlord…

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This week’s new material at SpaceWesterns is suitably horrific for the season:

• “In the Walls of Erxz” by H.P. Lovecraft & Kenneth J. Sterling
• “The Mound, Part VII” by H.P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop

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More spookiness over at Subterranean Online:

… a vintage tale by SubPress favorite Norman Partridge […] “Apotropaics“, a very different, and very chilling take on vampires.

Good grief. Am I the only person in genre fiction who’s bored of hearing about vampires, zombies and other lesser-known strains of the undead? Just askin’.

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We’re up to iteration 28 of Jayme Lynn Blaschke‘s Memory.

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A last-minute arrival from Jake Freivald at Flash Fiction Online:

There’s a new story up for Halloween: “Ray the Vampire” by Mercedes M. Yardley. The rest of our November issue will be published next week.

Cheers, Jake! See? More vamps. Sheesh.

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Finally, a couple of non-fiction bonuses:

First of all, Robert J Sawyer recommends a free download of The Atlas of Cyberspace by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin. Looks like it covers both the real and fictional manifestations of cyberspace, too, so plenty of geek points there.

Secondly, Gary Gibson says:

If you either fancy yourself as a writer, or you’re shopping your first novel around, or even several books deep into a career, you could do a lot worse than reading The Career Novelist, by American super-agent Donald Maass…

Fortunately, you can now download that book entirely free in PDF format directly from the Maass agency.

It apparently (and synchronously) comes recommended by Robert Sawyer as an essential book for any aspiring writer, also.

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Well, that’s your lot, folks. Keep the plugs, tip-offs and recommendations coming in (deadline 1800 GMT every Friday!), and have yourselves a great Halloween, Samhain, or non-denominational two-days-off, which ever you prefer. Adios!