All is quiet on the blogosphere… at least until tomorrow, when the States have recovered from Thanksgiving, I expect! Still, in the meantime here’s some free fiction to keep you busy until the bloggers get their engines cranked back up to speed.

There’s nothing from the big two this week, so let’s get straight to the webzines:

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Afterburn SF presents “Gliese 581” by Lee Gimenez.

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News from Paolo Bacigalupi:

Thanks to Lou Anders at PYR Books, my short story “The Gambler” which appeared in the original anthology Fast Forward 2 is now available online for free reading at PYR’s website.

A great story by a great writer in a great anthology. If you follow just one link from this week’s Friday Free Fiction, let it be this one.

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Strange Horizons presents “Up In the Air” by Richard Larson

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Tor.com presents The Buried Pyramid by Jane Lindskold. (Download for registered users only, but that don’t cost you nuthin’, mister.)

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COSMOS Magazine presents “Loop” by Peter J Bentley – “Being ‘born again’ and having the opportunity to live your life all over again sounds like a great idea – until it actually happens.”

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Electric Velocipede presents “Season of the Long Now” by Robert J Howe

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A handful via SF Signal, without whom we’d miss a great deal:

• Dragon Moon Press has several of its novels available for free PDF download
• The Scientific Indian presents “21 Minutes” by Rahul Jaisheel
• The final online issue of The Martian Wave features fiction by Anne Stringer and Rick Novy
• Ray Gun Revival #48 features fiction by Scott Davis, Mike Duran, D Thomas Mooers, R J Walker Miller, M Keaton, Keanan Brand, Sean T M Stiennon, and John M Whalen.
• Big Pulp presents “Cloning The King” by Bill Ward and “The Thing That Ate Mrs. Wilson’s Dog” by Sophie Bachard

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And it just wouldn’t be a Friday without a little bit of Friday Flash Fiction, would it? Let’s see: Neil Beynon is “Remembering Lisa“, while Gaie Sebold is “Empty“.

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And that’s your lot, folks – your tip-offs and plugs are always welcome, though. I hope none of our American readers have mortally injured themselves by overindulging in seasonal NOM NOM NOM action, and that everyone has an equally great weekend.

Here’s a suggestion: don’t read the news. It’ll only make you miserable, and there’s no point wasting emotional energy worrying about stuff that’s way beyond your control.

So why not read some free science fiction instead, eh? That’ll keep you distracted at no cost whatsoever! Get clicking…

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Manybooks has an old-school bit of satire in the form of “The Last American: A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy” by J A Mitchell

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At Apex Online:

• “Under the Dryer” by Fran Friel
• “A Place of Snow Angels” by Matt Wallace
• “Captive Girl” by Jennifer Pelland
• “Something Wet” by James F Reilly

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If you’re not yet experiencing a severe case of undead ennui, John Joseph Adams has unleashed some more free stories from his zombie anthology The Living Dead:

• “In Beauty, Like the Night” by Norman Partridge
• “Malthusian’s Zombie” by Jeffrey Ford
• “Sparks Fly Upward” by Lisa Morton
• “Followed” by Will McIntosh
• “Passion Play” by Nancy Holder

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At Subterranean Online:

Noted Steampunk aviatrix Cherie Priest debuts what she calls The Clockwork Century (“Combat dirigibles skulk across the sky and armored vehicles crawl along the land. Military scientists twist the laws of man and nature, and barter their souls for weapons powered by light, fire, and steam.”) in the novelette, “Tanglefoot”, the story of a gentle, tragic mad scientist and his boy assistant.

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Here’s a new free fiction start-up (downloadable PDF rather than in-browser HTML), Arkham Tales:

Presenting Issue #1 of Arkham Tales! 100 pages of the best weird fiction on the market right now, and all free for your reading pleasure!

This issue bears cover artwork by Ivan Green, and contains fiction by Mike W. Barr, Scott Bastedo, Steve Calvert, Robert Masterson, Benjamin W. Olson, Derek Rutherford, Jenny Schwartz, and Jeffery Scott Sims.

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Via Gwyneth Jones:

And now, six weeks before publication, & to celebrate the first sighting of a copy of the printed ARC on ebay, here’s Part 1 of [Jones’s forthcoming novel] Spirit set free again.

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Via Gareth L Powell, and many others:

The November issue of Concept Sci-Fi is now available to download as a free pdf file.

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Via John Jarrold:

Saxon Bullock has put the prologue and opening chapter of his wonderful SF novel, The Hypernova Gambit, up on his website.

Best. Author name. EVAR.

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Via The Scalzi:

The fabulous Sarah Zettel writes to inform me of BookViewCafe.com, a collaborative site filled with lots of fiction and other cool stuff, from a whole bunch of famous/interesting writers including Ursula Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre and Anne Harris…

And Futurismic regular Nancy Jane Moore is involved on the organisational side as well, which is a fine thing. BVC has been added to the sidebar of justice, so go take a look.

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Via Paul McAuley:

I recently blogged a six-part illustrated short story, “Edna Sharrow”, here. I’ve now archived the whole story on the web site, under a Creative Commons license… go straight to the first part. Enjoy!

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Via Cheryl Morgan:

Kelley Eskridge has posted the full text of her novella, “Dangerous Space”, on her blog. This is one of her stories about Mars, a character whose gender is never specified. I am in awe of how Kelley manages this. It is also a really good story.

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Here’s a couple of things we’d have missed, but for the ceaseless vigilance and generosity of the gang at SF Signal:

• The latest edition of Antipodean SF features fiction by Mark Farrugia, Kurt Kurchmeier, Jillian Moffatt, Richard Ridyard, Shaun A Saunders, Greg Wickenhofer, John Craig, PS Cottier, Adrian Gibb, and James C Clar.
• A now-complete serialised novella from Alan Baxter – A ‘Verse Full of Scum.

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As mentioned earlier in the week, Filipino genre fiction mavens Charles Tan and Mia Tijam have co-edited an entire virtual anthology of speculative fiction written in English by Filipino writers – a great way to expose new writers to an otherwise hard-to-access market.

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Finally, here’s a smattering of Friday Flash Fiction for you: Sarah Ellender displays her quintessential Britishness with “Tea and Vigilance“, while Gareth D Jones considers “The Blue Men”

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That’s all, folks! Don’t forget to hit us up with your plugs, tip-offs and shout-outs. In the meantime, have the best weekend you can.