Tag Archives: Fiction

Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 24th April

3 Comments

It’s Friday evening here in the UK, which can only mean one thing – a big batch of free science fiction to read on the intertubes, of course! So, without further delay…

***

Just the one at ManyBooks:

***

And an old-school novel at FeedBooks:

***

Because he’s too modest to just step up and tell you himself, Futurismic blogger Edward Willett asked me to mention:

I’ve posted the first two chapters of my upcoming novel Terra Insegura (sequel to the Aurora Award-nominated Marseguro) to my new-and-improved website. Bonus: I’ve also posted MP3s of myself reading said chapters. Terra Insegura is published by DAW Books and will be in bookstores May 5.

Go take a look!

***

Season 2 of Shadow Unit continues with “Dragons”

***

Jason Stoddard presents chapter 5.2 of Eternal Franchise

***

Via pretty much everywhere:

Neil Gaiman, Lou Anders, Bryan Talbot, Hal Duncan, Catherynne M Valente, Chris Roberson, Paul S Kemp and Rhys Hughes contributed fiction and articles that are part of issue 5 of Heliotrope, an appreciation to the legendary writer, Michael Moorcock.

Go get your Elric on.

***

Subterranean Online presents “The Ascendant” by Ted Kosmatka

***

Strange Horizons presents “As He Was” by Kit St. Germain

***

Tor.com presents “Bugs in the Arroyo” by Stephen Gould

***

Here’s the stuff that the ubiquitous metaphorical feelers of SF Signal  probed out from the week:

  • Raygun Revival issue #52 features fiction by Andy Heizeler, L S King, Justin R Macumber, Keanan Brand, Jodi MacArthur, Martin Turton, Darrell B Nelson, and M Keaton
  • PulpGen presents “The Chalice of Circe” by Willard Hawkins

Big Pulp presents:

And finally, some more free excerpts:

***

Here’s two weeks worth of  Friday Flash Fictionto make up for me sloping off early last week:

***

And finally, a bonus for those of stern disposition (or a cephalopod festish) –The Complete Works of H P Lovecraft, available to read for free on the web. [via Matt Staggs]

***

There you have it, folks. As always, get in touch if you have anything to plug, promote or recommend; our trained operators are waiting for your call – er, email. Have a great weekend!

Blog

Writing the mega-corporation realistically

5 Comments

corporate headquartersJason Stoddard has gotten tired of stories and novels featuring shadowy and nefarious mega-corporations seeking to enslave the globe, and with good reason – it’s just not a realistic or logical thing for a corporation to do, and it’s becoming a modern iteration of the moustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash villain cliché. [image by victoriapeckham]

A corporation doesn’t care if you’re living in a 300 square foot studio apartment or a 6000 square foot McMansion. They don’t want to wipe out the McMansion dwellers, or elevate the studio apartment owners. They only care about one thing: that you buy their stuff.

For everything they do, they’ll have justification. There’s no hidden business plan with a top-line mission statement of “Destroying Civilization As We Know It.”

But there will be hundreds or thousands of decisions, all based on maximizing profit. Substituting cheaper ingredients: maximize profit. Use low-income countries for labor: maximizing profit. Driving smaller competitors out of business: ensuring growth, which maximizes profit. Extending credit to anyone: maximizes profit.

If they can make a bigger profit selling you a “green” condo and a Prius rather than a McMansion and an Escalade, that’s exactly what they’ll do. If they think they’ll make an even larger profit renting you an apartment and leasing you a bike, that’s what they’ll do.

While we’re on the subject of capitalist economics, ethics and prosperity, here’s Matt Ridley at Wired UK explaining why robber barons always end up on top – it’s because they find ways to make things cheaper for you, the consumer:

It’s still happening today. Wal-Mart, Aldi and Ryanair won their market shares by ruthlessly charging us viciously lower prices. And here lies a cause for optimism in the midst of this recession. Even though jobs are being lost, houses repossessed and firms bankrupted, the underlying deflation caused by innovation is still going on – indeed, on the web, it’s accelerating. All over the internet, people are dreaming up ways of making things available to you more cheaply, more conveniently, more copiously and more quickly. That is what will cause prosperity to return one day.

That’s a brave op-ed, given the current econo-political climate, but I suspect he’s at least half right. However, I was somewhat amused to note that Ridley’s masthead note says he was a non-executive chairman for Northern Rock for three years; make of that what you will. 😉

Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 17th April

Another week flies by – is it just me or are they getting faster? Haven’t I said that before? What if I’m caught in some sort of temporal loop in a simulated universe? What if none of you are actually real?

Ah, who cares – it’s Friday, and there’s free science fiction stories to read on the internet. Get stuck in!

***

Here’s a couple at ManyBooks:

***

And a bona fide classic from one of the genre’s best known names at FeedBooks:

***

HUB Magazine presents “The Not Knowing” by Conrad Williams

***

Subterranean Online presents “Under the Honey” by Liz Williams

***

Strange Horizons presents “The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon, a classic from 1959

***

Jason Stoddard presents chapter 5.1 of Eternal Franchise

***

Jeremiah Tolbert presents “The Kansas Jayhawk vs. The Midwest Monster Squad“; this awesome geek-gonzo (geekzo? gonzeek?) story was published in Interzone a few years back, and comes with my sincerest recommendation as a fun read.

***

Shadow Unit has posted another DVD Extra:  “Disintegration”

***

Via Tor.com (and others – saw it there first), Lone Star Stories are giving away a free PDF version of their recent anthology, the Lone Star Stories Reader.

***

Via Cory at BoingBoing comes an opportunity to read a story originally written for him and his wife as a honeymoon gift: “(Nothing But) Flowers” by John McDaid

***

Also via BoingBoing (and many many others), Steampunk Magazine returns after a long hiatus with the free-to-download 5th issue of the subgenre-defining zine.

***

Just sneaking into my inbox before I leave the house comes a message from Lee Giminez:

I wanted to let you know that my science fiction short story, “September 12“, was just published in The Cynic Magazine.

Cheers, Lee!

***

Unusually, we seem to have caught almost all the same things as SF Signal this week, though they do have a beefy round-up post from earlier today that might be worth looking through. And don’t forget they’ve collected links to all the free-to-read Hugo Award nominee stories as well.

***

As my schedule in the world beyond the internet demands I be elsewhere this afternoon, I only have one piece of Friday Flash to report at the time of compiling this post, namely “Patterns” by Gaie Sebold. All later arrivals will be collected up in next week’s post, as always.

***

And there’ you have it; don’t forget to send us your tip-offs, plugs and links about good sf stuff to read on the web. In the meantime, I’m off to London to meet none other than Tim Powers – have a good weekend!

Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 10th April

1 Comment

It’s Easter weekend! Even if the religious significance does nothing for you, the potential for a long weekend off is something to shout about. Because time off means time for reading stories…. and if you’ve not got anything specific in your reading queue, we’ve got your back right here with this week’s Friday Free Fiction round-up. Let’s go!

***

A couple from ManyBooks:

***

And a few from FeedBooks:

***

Paolo Bacigalupi and Night Shade Books have made three of Paolo’s stories from his collection Pump Six – “The Calorie Man”, “Pop Squad” and “Yellow Card Man” – available as a free pdf for a reading group called Think Galactic. Bacigalupi’s one of the writers I fully expect to get very big very fast; go read these tales and find out why.

***

Shadow Unit‘s latest episode is called “Sugar”

***

HUB Magazine presents “Under a Bridge” by Paul Fairburn

***

Apex Online has its monthly trio of fresh stories up:

***

COSMOS Magazine presents “Fuel” by Matthew S Rotundo

***

Subterranean Online starts off its spring edition with “A Tulip for Lucretius” by Ken MacLeod

***

Strange Horizons presents “Husbandry” by Eugene Fischer

***

Three new pieces at Lone Star Stories:

***

As always, SF Signal has round-ups of its own, and a few scattered miscellania:

  • H P Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror #5 is available as a free PDF download
  • The latest issue of AntipodeanSF contains fiction by S A Harris, Steve Duffy, Alan Baxter, Jamie Richter, Shaun A Saunders, Mark Farrugia, Felicity Dowker, Alan Richard, David Such, and Brendan D Carson
  • Aphelion presents fiction by Patrick Welch, Jeani Rector, Coffee Anderson, Jaimie L Elliott, Richard Tornello, Gary W Feather, E W Bonadio, Lee Gimenez, Tony Coles, Matt Spencer, Dale Carothers, McCamy Taylor and Larissa March

***

Most of the Friday Flash Fictioneers are at EasterCon right now (and I wish I was there also); that means just a few offerings of microfiction for this week:

***

And that’s pretty much it! Don’t forget to get in touch with recommendations and tip-offs (fictional or non-fictional; in the meantime, enjoy your weekend!