It’s the first Friday of the month, which means the usual bumper crop of free science fiction stories for you to read… though I would just like to draw your attention to Futurismic‘s own contribution to April’s harvest, namely “A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness“, penned by no less a luminary than Tim Pratt.
So, go read Tim’s story, then tuck in to whatever takes your fancy from the following fictional finger-buffet…
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A brace from ManyBooks:
- “It’s a Small Solar System” by Allan Howard
- “The Helpful Robots” by Robert J Shea
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Four from FeedBooks:
- “I Like Martian Music” by Charles E Fritch
- “Flight Through Tomorrow” by Stanton Arthur Coblentz
- “Stopover” by William Gerken
- “Bolden’s Pets” by Floyd L Wallace
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Yet more preliminary extra material from Season 2 of Shadow Unit: “Consumption”
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SpaceWesterns is keeping it old-school with a reprinted classic: “A Curious Pleasure Excursion” by Mark Twain
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New month, new issue of Clarkesworld:
- “Rolling Steel: a Pre-apocalyptic Love Story” by Jay Lake and Shannon Page
- “The Dying World” by Lavie Tidhar
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Is it just me, or has Farrago’s Wainscot had a redesign? Either which way, they’re got a new issue online with six stories for you to read:
- “Wasp Light“ by Bruce Boston & Lee Ballentine
- “Four Last Things: A Disruption of Boschtown“ by Toiya Kristen Finley
- “The Imogen Effect“ by Jason Fischer
- “Seven Men (in Various States of Fabrication)“ by Jason Heller
- “A Nameless Deed“ by S J Hirons
- “All the Worlds“ by Matthew Kressel
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Back after a nasty hacker attack, Pantechnicon‘s latest issue went up last week. There’s a whole bunch of fiction to read there for nothing, so get to it. If you’re feeling particularly choosy, you can narrow it down to just the science fiction stuff.
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Unstoppable anthology-makin’-machine John Joseph Adams has launched the website for Federations, his new book of interstellar sf stories, which includes links to four free-to-read teaser tales:
- “The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousnesses” by James Alan Gardner
- “The Culture Archivist” by Jeremiah Tolbert
- “Carthago Delenda Est” by Genevieve Valentine
- “The Shoulders of Giants” by Robert J Sawyer
There are downloadable mobile document formats available on the Federations site itself, if that’s your preference.
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Via pretty much everyone who contributed to it (and then some), the Hugo-nominated METAtropolis audiobook is available for free for a limited period at Audible.com.
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Jayme Lynn Blaschke presents the thirty-sixth fragment of his Memory.
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Jason Stoddard presents chapter 4.2 of Eternal Franchise
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The tireless SF Signal crew once again have a couple of posts collecting the free fiction from the past week, and they caught the following extras as well:
- The latest issue of The Future Fire presents stories by Eric Del Carlo, Nader Elhefnawy, Melanie Rees and Rob Sharp
- “The Mirror Men” by Stuart Clark
- Hairy Green Eyeball presents “The Second Shell” by Jack Williamson
- The Eldritch Dark, a Clark Ashton Smith tribute site, offers many of Smith’s stories online
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Last but not least, here’s a little bit of Friday Flash Fiction for you:
- “And Baby Makes n+1” by Sumit Dam
- “A Housewarming Gift” by Gaie Sebold
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That should keep you occupied for a while, I think. Don’t forget to shoot us a message if there’s something you think warrants inclusion in next week’s round-up; in the meantime, have a good weekend.