Ever wonder what Twitter could ever possibly be good for? Here’s one answer – Thaumatrope, a microfiction webzine limited to 140 characters.
(Which is exactly as many as the above paragraph, if you were wondering. 😉 )
Category Archives: Blog
Jason Stoddard’s latest Futurismic story to appear in Rich Horton’s Unplugged anthology!
OK, you’re going to have to excuse me being a bit effusive here, but I’ve just heard that – for the first time – a story originally published on Futurismic is going to appear in a Best of the Year anthology!
Rich Horton has decided to publish the first anthology devoted purely to stories published on the web from multiple publishers. Unplugged: The Best of Online Fiction will be released by Wyrm Publishing (the people behind the excellent Clarkesworld Magazine), and it will feature Jason Stoddard‘s “Willpower“, published just two weeks ago right here on Futurismic!
Here’s the complete table of contents:
- Beth Bernobich, “Air and Angels” (Subterranean, Spring)
- Mercurio D Rivera, “Snatch Me Another” (Abyss and Apex, First Quarter)
- Nancy Kress, “First Rites” (Baen’s Universe, October)
- Tina Connolly, “The Bitrunners” (Helix, Summer)
- Rebecce Epstein, “When We Were Stardust” (Fantasy, February)
- Jason Stoddard, “Willpower” (Futurismic, December)
- Peter S Beagle, “The Tale of Junko and Sayiri” (IGMS, July)
- David Dumitru, “Little Moon, Too, Goes Round” (Aeon Thirteen)
- Hal Duncan, “The Behold of the Eye” (Lone Star, August)
- Will McIntosh, “Linkworlds” (Strange Horizons, March 17-24)
- Merrie Haskell, “The Girl-Prince” (Coyote Wild, August)
- Brendan DuBois, “Not Enough Stars in the Night” (Cosmos)
- Catherynne M Valente, “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica” (Clarkesworld, May)
- Cory Doctorow, “The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away” (Tor.com)
Congratulations to all the authors, and to the sites that published them! You can’t imagine how proud I am to see Futurismic considered alongside big hitters of online genre fiction like Strange Horizons and Tor.com – I run this site for the love of short form science fiction, but to see Chris’s editorial skills and Jason’s writing vindicated by Horton’s selection is a greater gift than I ever hoped to receive this year.
Indeed, Unplugged is a great moment for webzines in general – we’re not third-class venues any more. So thank you, Rich – and thank you all – for reading and believing in what we do. Here’s hoping for more selections in years to come!
Friday Free Fiction for 12th December
Outside my flat it’s cold, damp and very dark. Indoors, however, I can bathe in the comforting glow of a flatscreen monitor replete with links to free science fiction stories available online… and what better way to get into the seasonal spirit than by sharing, eh?
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A couple of classics from Manybooks:
- “The Gallery” by Roger Phillips Graham
- “Unthinkable” by Roger Phillips Graham
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Here’s a handful from Feedbooks:
- “True Names” by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum
- “Starman’s Quest” by Robert Silverberg
- “The Last Evolution” by John W Campbell Jr
- “A Scientist Rises” by Desmond Winter Hall
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Via OldMiser and others, another freebie from Gwyneth Jones:
Castles Made Of Sand […] should have had a fortunate début, given that the first episode had just won a major award when it came out, but it was all a bit of a rush, and I’ve always wanted to go back and give the script a scale and polish, nothing too painful. So here it is, a few pages shorter, bloopers excised and every sentence a bit tighter, tho’ possibly only the writer can tell.
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A couple of republications from Jay Lake – “The Golden Whip” and “Real North”
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COSMOS Magazine presents “Delivery” by Trent Jamieson
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A message from Ben Rawluk:
I have a couple more short-short SF/weird fictions up at my blog: “Sarah in the Wheat“, “Street Performances” and “It’s All Biohazards Down Here“.
As well, I’ve posted a couple more of my Filthy Postcard Stories series, #3, #4 and #5.
Cheers, Ben!
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Strange Horizons presents “The Same Old Story” by Naomi Bloch
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The new issue of Ideomancer (which should really get itself an RSS feed) features fiction and poetry by George S Walker, A C Wise, Rachel Swirsky, Marsheila Rockwell, David Kopaska-Merkel and J C Runolfson.
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Another update from Subterranean Online; I don’t usually link to podcast stories here (simply because so many other places already do) but I thought I’d break ranks for this one:
…we’re capping off the fall issue with a real corker — one of Alastair Reynolds’ fine space opera novellas, read by Sam Mowry. Head over and check out Thousandth Night, which was the jumping off point for Al’s most recent novel, House of Suns.
Great writer, Al Reynolds; go listen.
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And here’s the stuff that SF Signal‘s immense trawler net caught that I’d have otherwise missed:
- Vonda McIntyre has made some of her fiction available for free download in various formats, including her novel The Moon and the Sun
- Matthew Jarpe has released “City of Reason“
- Michael Swanwick presents his flash fiction story “Like the Boiled Eggs in Isaac Asimov“, inspired by Janet Kagan, and the story behind the story about its creation
- Mindflights presents “Demons Without, Demon Within” by Scott M Sandridge
- Every Day Fiction presents:
- “Waiting to Pounce” by Steve Goble
- “The Wizard’s Walk” by Robert Goffeney
- “Death is a Weird Shade of Pink” by M Sherlock
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And to finish, a few bits of Friday Flash Fiction:
- “Blood and Snow” by Neil Beynon
- “Headlines” by Gaie Sebold
- “Fear a’ Ghondòla” by Gareth D Jones – a Gaelic translation of of his story “The Gondolier”
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And there you have it. Don’t forget to let us know if there’s something you think I might miss! In the meantime, have a great weekend.
Christmas post: Mary Magdalene’s perfume found?
This could be a marketing opportunity for somebody.
Franciscan archaeologists digging in the biblical town of Magdala in present-day Israel say they have uncovered vials of perfume similar to those used by Mary Magdalene, the woman believed to have washed the feet of Jesus.
…”[W]e have in our hands ‘cosmetic products’ from Christ’s time,” said [lead archaeologist Father Stefano] De Luca.
[Image: Wikimedia Commons]
Latest ebook platform – the Nintendo DS
Looks like it’s not only the iPhone alpha geeks who’ll be able to feed their reading jones with their favourite piece of portable tech; Nintendo have teamed up with publishers HarperCollins to provide a collection of classic books for reading on the little DS handheld games console. [image by catatronic]
While it’s interesting to see more of these partnerships emerging, this one looks to be half win and half fail. On the plus side, getting affordable reading content onto a low-priced device with good penetration into the youth market and no additional fees for regular usage (in other words, the complete opposite of the iPhone) is a brilliant move; that’s exactly the demographic space publishers need to colonise.
But bundling up crusty old classics like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens? Where’s the kid appeal there? Plus most of those titles are so cheaply available in book form it seems pointless charging for them in electronic form.
HarperCollins might have been wiser to initially push out YA, chick lit and graphic novels; I expect those DS users who read fiction would be more likely to part with some money for something a bit more modern than anything by the Brontë sisters or Shakespeare. No amount of marketing speak about “broadening the user base for the device” is going to convince me otherwise, either.