It’s a thin week for free fiction, which probably shouldn’t be entirely surprising after last week’s mammoth batch. There’s still a little for you to get your teeth into, though:
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Only the one from Manybooks.net, but it’s by a classic author: “The Happy Unfortunate” by Robert Silverberg. (“Dekker, back from space, found great physical changes in the people of Earth; changes that would have horrified him five years before. But now, he wanted to be like the rest–even if he had to lose an eye and both ears to do it.” Sheesh – the price of conformity, eh?)
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Lesley Smith dropped us a line to let us know about ElectricSpec, an three-times-yearly online speculative fiction webzine that has now been added to the Futurismic Sidebar Of Justice. Cheers, Lesley!
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Via the Iain (M) Banks website comes news that UK newspaper The Independent has teamed up with Audible.co.uk to provide a free-to-download audiobook version of Iain Banks‘s first published novel, The Wasp Factory.
I will point out that it’s not a science fiction novel, but go on to say that it’s an excellent story anyway and well worth your time. It also has one of the best twist endings EVER. Go get it!
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The irrepressible Hal Duncan has, in addition to some audio content, a long short story for you to download. In the man’s own words:
“Well, what we have is a previously unpublished novella, “Die! Vampire! Die!”. It’s 15,000 words (cause I don’t do anything by halves) of black humour, featuring some characters ye might well recognise from [Duncan’s novels] VELLUM and INK, my gay Orpheus punk rock musical NOWHERE TOWN, and every other f*cking story they refuse to let me write without them worming their way into it.”
Roughly translated, that means it should be a riot to read.
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Warren Ellis‘s free Freakangels comic is up to episode 9, and is starting to get some good character complexity developing.
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The ranks of the Friday Flash Fictioneers are filling out again. I’m pleading external obligations this week, but Dan Pawley is back (from the deepest internet-devoid reaches of, er, Bournemouth) with an extra-length piece called “Doing The Islands“.
Elsewhere, Gareth D Jones says “Now You See Me“, while Gareth L Powell lurks in the “Victoria Rooms“; Neil Beynon is watching “Pixies“, and Greg O’Byrne‘s in the mood for “Tekepathic Love“; Jay Lake muses on “The Inertia of Corpses” while Clive Birnie has developed a serious fear of the UK healthcare system – “The NHS Was Trying To Kill Him“.
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And that’s all for this week, boys and girls … but for me to remind you to keep sending us your tip-offs and plugs, of course. We’d rather people told us about things we already knew than miss out on something we didn’t, so drop us a line even if you think we’re already on the case!
In the meantime, have a good weekend.
In Japan, the population is falling, causing a reduced workforce that can’t keep up with pension and healthcare payments. In most other countries, you’d think a healthy dose of immigration and the social payments that go with it would keep things rolling. But not Japan. They’d rather invest billions in robots to do everything from hand out tissues to sell mobile phones to hock vinegar, or just do plain old stupid tricks.
The headlines about the global economic situation aren’t getting any more cheerful right now, are they? While there are many many contributing factors to a complex economic system, 
United States Defense Department investigators have discovered that it’s surprisingly easy to purchase restricted or classified items of military hardware; all you need to do is