Category Archives: Blog

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Friday Free Fiction for 17th October

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Is it just me, or are the weeks speeding up? Seems like only yesterday I compiled the last Friday Free Fiction post, but here I am again with a big batch of free-to-read science fiction from the far reaches of the hyper-clogged intertubes…

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A couple of oldies at Manybooks.net:

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A whole bunch of stuff from Feedbooks:

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Via Karl Schroeder:

You can try out Metatropolis, the shared world anthology from Audible.com, before buying. There’s a sample from my own story, “To Hie from Far Cilenia”, or if you want you can listen to Jay Lake’s excellent story, “In the Forests of the Night” in its entirety.

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Paul McAuley seems intent on sharing pretty much the whole of his new novel The Quiet War; here’s chapter 8 and chapter 9.

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Via pretty much everywhere, it seems that although you can’t read it, you can hear the entirety of Neil Gaiman‘s new YA novel The Graveyard Book… as read by Gaiman himself on his just-finished tour of bookstores and lovingly video’d by his people.

The videos are embedded in different posts on his blog, but this category collects them all together. I know it’s not sf, but it deserves inclusion because it’s good to see that even as big a name as Gaiman can see the merits in giving free access to his work.

Plus he’s a very nice chap, don’t you know. 🙂

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Scotland-based Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi just sold a trilogy to Gollancz, but the first book isn’t even finished yet, so there’ll be a while to wait until you can read it.

Some of you may have read his story in the latest Interzone… the rest of you can make do with the free stories stashed on Rajaniemi’s website:

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This week at Strange Horizons: “The Lion and the Mouse” by Kaolin Imago Fire

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Ray Gun Revival has a new issue available to download (comes as a PDF, y’see).

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Two new pieces at SpaceWesterns:

They’ve just upped their rates for fiction, by the way, so sf writers with a Clint Eastwood jones should get over there and submit something.

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A message from Ben Rawluk:

A couple weird/SF postcard stories available on my blog: #1 and #2.

As well, the first issue of Future Earth is available for free as a pdf, with lots of fiction and poetry inside.

Thanks, Ben!

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke has found the twenty-sixth fragment of his Memory.

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Finally, some Friday Flashing from a few of the usual suspects:

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And here’s a novelty non-fiction bonus via BoingBoing whose title explains itself:

The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush by Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Perhaps that should be filed under fantasy? 😉

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That’s all for this week, boys and girls. Keep those tip-offs coming in – deadline is 1800 GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!

Blog

Offshore abortion boat defies Spanish laws

In a world that is increasingly flattened by technology and transportation, it’s getting harder for nation-states to impose restrictions on their citizens. Spain’s abortion laws are the latest to be challenged by Holland’s “Women on Waves” ship, which anchors in international waters offshore from countries with prohibitive stances on abortion to allow women the right of choice without fear of legal repercussions. [via Pharyngula]

When climate change turns entire nations into refugees and/or migrants, will geography cease to determine which legal system constrains you? Or will the notion of physical territory simply become atomised to the micro-scale, like the turf demarcations of London teenagers?

Blog

Win Wyndham’s five cozy catastrophes

The Midwich Cuckoos - John WyndhamGood news if you’re a fan of classic British sf novels – Penguin Books have just republished five of John Wyndham‘s “cozy catastrophe” books with fresh new artwork, and there’s a competition over at Forbidden Planet where you can get the chance to win them all by answering a ridiculously easy-to-Google question.

The only catch is that you have to sign up for a Forbidden Planet account (if you don’t already have one), but there’s worse outfits to get the occasional email from than a comics and genre fiction specialist, AMIRITE?

Blog

Brain computer interface works on monkeys

Good news on the Brain Computer Interface front, from PhysOrg:

Researchers in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health have demonstrated for the first time that a direct artificial connection from the brain to muscles can restore voluntary movement in monkeys whose arms have been temporarily anesthetized.

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“A robotic arm would be better for someone whose physical arm has been lost or if the muscles have atrophied, but if you have an arm whose muscles can be stimulated, a person can learn to reactivate them with this technology,” says Dr. Fetz.

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Here, the researchers discovered that any motor cortex cell, regardless of whether it had been previously associated with wrist movement, was capable of stimulating muscle activity.

This finding greatly expands the potential number of neurons that could control signals for brain-computer interfaces and also illustrates the flexibility of the motor cortex.

Researcher Dr. Fetz says that this is still around a decade away from clinical applications, but hopefully this kind of research will eventually lead to new treatments for paralysis.

[image from Retinafunk on flickr]

Blog

Schneier slams quantum crypto as ‘pointless’

bank vault doorSecurity maven Bruce Schneier (who’s an active science fiction fan, by the way) has a column up at Wired that gives quantum cryptography a vigorous kicking. Evidently he’s been noticing the same stories as myself, because he points out that “headlines like the BBC’s “‘Unbreakable’ encryption unveiled” are a bit much.” O RLY?

The big difference between Schneier and me, though, is that he really knows how this stuff all works… and as such, he’s not seduced by quantum cryptography’s golden promises:

Security is a chain; it’s as strong as the weakest link. Mathematical cryptography, as bad as it sometimes is, is the strongest link in most security chains. Our symmetric and public-key algorithms are pretty good, even though they’re not based on much rigorous mathematical theory. The real problems are elsewhere: computer security, network security, user interface and so on.

Let’s not forget the weakest link of all, either – the users themselves… [image by the anonymous collective]