Wow, it’s the end of January already – where the hell’s this year going to so fast, I ask you?

With another week comes another batch of free science fiction stories on the intertubes, lovingly collected from the RSS quagmire and presented for your edification and enjoyment. Bon appetit!

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Just the one from Manybooks:

• “Light-Years Ahead of his Time” by Joseph Devon

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And just the one from Feedbooks:

• “The Love of Frank Nineteen” by David Carpenter Knight

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Polu Texni presents “Very Truly Yours, Part II” by Seth Gordon

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SpaceWesterns presents “The Reckoning” by John P Wilson

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Via the perpetrators themselves (and pretty much everyone else), here’s an opening sample from “Colliding Branes” by Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker.

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Some microfiction news from the Orbit gang:

Jeff Somers — author of The Electric Chruch, The Digital Plague, and the forthcoming The Eternal Prison — is tweeting a short story, a few lines at a time.

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On the subject of Twitter fiction, here’s another example: MidnightStories tweets a 140 character story every night at midnight, Texas time.

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Via EOS Books:

Harper Perennial is celebrating the short story this year, and each Sunday evening during 2009 will be posting a new story from both established authors and début authors. This year they have already published stories from Tony O’Neill, Simon Van Booy, and Mary Gaitskill. Check it out at www.fiftytwostories.com.

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Strange Horizons presents part two of “The Shangri-La Affair” by Lavie Tidhar

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Here’s Memory #32 by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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In keeping with his manifesto of optimism, Jason Stoddard has decided that a lot of his trunk stories are now obsolete, set as they are in a future that now appears much less likely to actually become real (and let’s all hope he’s right on that point).

As a result, he’s releasing some free fiction to the web; first up on the block is his unpublished novel Eternal Franchise, to be serialised over the coming year, starting with chapter 1.1. The future depicted within may be obsolete, but Jason’s storytelling surely isn’t – so why not follow his RSS feed for a vision of the future that might have been?

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Via Chris Roberson:

BookSpot Central is featuring a preview of the first three chapters of The Dragon’s Nine Sons, if you haven’t read the book and would like to sample it.

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A Continuous Coast update from Kit O’Connell:

The latest fiction from the Creative Commons-licensed Continuous Coast project is available. The first five parts of Reesa Brown’s rescue ride are up as of now.

Those interested in learning more about the extreme sport of Gurge Riding depicted in the stories may also want to read these recent chat transcripts.

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The SF Signal gang, in addition to their traditional linkitude, are hosting some excerpts:

Several weeks back, I read and enjoyed Hater by David Moody, a tense thriller with science fictional leanings.

St Martin’s is allowing us to offer the first four chapters right here on SF Signal. Read Chapter 1 below. The next chapter will appear next week.

Meanwhile, here’s all the other gubbins they caught in their trawler-net of justice:

• Infinite Canvas presents “The Day The Saucers Came” by Neil Gaiman [Editor’s note: I’ve heard him read this aloud, and it’s a super little story. Pure Gaiman all the way.]
• Mindflights presents “Marionettes” by Mike Simon
• The new issue of AntipodeanSF features fiction by Jill Smith, Julie Cohen Wornan, Kirstyn McDermott, Matthew Sanborn Smith, Angie Smibert, Shaun A Saunders, Richard Thorne, Mark Farrugia, Ashley Hibbert, and Felicity Dowker
• M-BRANE SF is a new genre magazine available in PDF format

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Before we start with Friday Flash Fiction, here’s a message from a new contributor, Sumit Dam:

Thought I would let you know that I’m posting weekly Friday Flash too, over at Sumitsays.com. Last Friday’s offering was “The Unbearable Beings of Lightness“, my contribution to the Altered Film Titles challenge.

Thanks, Sumit! And here’s this week’s collection:

• Neil Beynon has “A Short Story About Nothing“
• Sarah Ellender smells “Trouble, a Bruin“
• Sumit Dam takes “Flight“
• Gareth D Jones presents a Gaelic remix of his earlier story “Launch” – “Air Bhog“

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And that’s all we have for you this week, ladies and gents. Don’t forget to keep us posted about any free sf that you hear of; we’ll link it here and give you a shout as well. In the meantime, have a great weekend!