Tag Archives: Fiction

ILLUMINATIONS – Creative Commons charity flash fiction anthology announced

Illuminations-Friday-Flash-Fiction-Anthology-cover Along with Odd Two Out Publishing, I’m extremely pleased to announce that ILLUMINATIONS: The Friday Flash Fiction Anthology will be launched at Orbital 2008 next weekend.

Regular readers will be familiar with the Friday Flash Fictioneers from Futurismic‘s free fiction round-ups. We’ve teamed up and collected over sixty of our best flash stories from the last nine months, and yours truly has edited them into ILLUMINATIONS, all profits from which will be donated to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children here in the UK.

ILLUMINATIONS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence – the stories are already out there in the magical tubes of the internets, so we thought we’d like to set them free formally at the same time as making them available in one convenient and attractive package!

ILLUMINATIONS will be available in book form from Odd Two Out Publishing after 25th March 2008 (or from the authors themselves) for GB£6.99, or as a downloadable PDF for an as yet unannounced price.

The Friday Flash Fictioneers are Gareth L Powell, Gareth D Jones, Martin McGrath, Dan Pawley, Justin Pickard, Neil Beynon, Shaun C Green and yours truly, Paul Graham Raven. You can read the entire official announcement at Velcro City Tourist Board; I’ll be reporting any further developments here at Futurismic as well.

And with the formal stuff out of the way, I’d just like to say that seeing my own name on the front of a book is probably the most amazing feeling I’ve had in my life so far!

Friday Free Fiction for 7th March

It’s that time of week again, ladies and gents …

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A fistful from Manybooks.net:

Plus a bonus for any Dutch-speaking readers:

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John Joseph Adams has released six stories from his Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse anthology, free to read at your leisure right here on the intarwebs:

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Cosmos Magazine presents: “Untangling the Future” by Ingrid Banwell

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From the Subterranean Press posse:

“Over at Subterranean Online, we’re closing out the Winter 2008 issue in fine style, with The Voyage of the Proteus, a delightfully sardonic novelette from the acid dipped pen of Thomas M. Disch. As the limited edition of Voyage has already sold out, we wanted to share this tale of today and deep in the past with as many readers as possible. We’ll be posting a new chapter every other weekday during March. Enjoy.”

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Via John Joseph Adams and many other venues: Night Shade Books is releasing the entire text of Richard Kadrey‘s novel Butcher Bird: A Novel Of The Dominion as a DRM-free download, in a wide variety of formats.

“The world of Butcher Bird is one where angels and devils brawl in the streets, where the Black Clerks charged with keeping the Dominions in check have developed their own dark agenda, where the swordswoman known as Blind Shrike battles monsters in deadly combat, where a civil war has broken out in Hell, and where Spider Lee, an unassuming San Francisco tattoo artist, and his drinking buddy LuLu Garou, have been dropped right smack into the middle of the action.

Richard himself describes the book as “the Gnostic Gospels meets Wild at Heart.” Butcher Bird is an odyssey that will take you from the San Francisco underground to decadent palaces to the very gates of Hell… and beyond!”

Crikey.

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Knock on Coffins” is the second instalment of the collaborative fiction project Shadow Unit; Elizabeth Bear took the duties on this one.

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Occasional Futurismic contributor and all-round nice guy Jeremiah Tolbert has updated his online bibliography, which includes lots of stuff that’s free to read.

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Well, hark at Jonathan Lethem getting all posh and literary on us; he went and got “The King of Sentences” published in The New Yorker!

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Paolo Bacigalupi is also in the mood for giving it away:

“I’ve added some sample stories under the PUMP SIX header. In addition to “The Tamarisk Hunter” I’ve also added the Hugo and Nebula nominee “The People of Sand and Slag” and just for grins, I also posted the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist “The Fluted Girl.” That should give people enough of an idea about my writing to either love it or hate it.”

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From Mike Brotherton:

“My new novel Spider Star is officially released today … I’ve uploaded what I hope is very close to a final version of the prologue and first four chapters.”

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Via Uncle Nick, news on the latest edition of Clarkesworld Magazine:

Stephen Dedman writes about Poe’s teeth in “Teeth“, and Ekaterina Sedia discusses the important issues of SUPER-SPERM and PARASITIC FETUSES in our science commentary Evolutionary Arms Race!”

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Jay Lake‘s off at a writing workshop this weekend (lucky devil), but he dropped off another of his frequent freebies earlier in the week:

“The current installment in this series is my short story “The Angel’s Daughter“. At 1,200 words, this originally appeared in the August, 2004 issue of Realms of Fantasy, then reprinted in Fantasy: The Best of 2004. If you like the story, please consider subscribing to Realms of Fantasy.”

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Lise Andreasen from Copenhagen reappears with a story called “Supervision“.

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Jake Freivald wrote to tell us that there’s a new edition of Flash Fiction OnLine, er, online.

It includes a piece from Jim Van Pelt, who as regular readers will know is someone whose writing advice I greatly respect. Naturally, he’s shared his thoughts about (and links for resources concerning) flash fiction before, as it’s a format he’s very fond of.

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Which brings us – by way of a segue that even Howard Stern would remove his hat for – to the Friday Flash Fictioneers!

It’s another slow week for the triple-F crew for an assortment of reasons, but a few of us are still kicking out the jams – Justin Pickard‘s resolve is “Non-Perishable“, and Gareth L Powell doesn’t give a damn when “Life Goes Wrong“. Meanwhile, yours truly is “Leaving Mars” – maybe I should hitch a ride on Neil Beynon‘s second “Elevator“?

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And that would appear to be that for this week – a pretty decent haul, I reckon. Don’t forget to drop us any tip-offs or blatant self-plugs that you may have by way of the Contact page. And in the interim – have a great weekend!

In praise of Uxo

Fellow Friday Flash Fictioneer (and good friend) Shaun C Green has been nothing short of effusive about Futurismic’s return to the fiction field. Shaun had this to say about Eliot Fintushel’s “Uxo, Bomb Dog”:

“The tale itself is brilliantly written, with a distinctive voice and a playful approach to its arduous subject matter […] Fintushel’s tongue is planted firmly in his cheek throughout, as evidenced by the dominant, um, pseudo-religious movement of his USA being Naderism (complete with rubber noses, street parades and general amnesties). Fintushel’s characters are endearing and lovable; they’re not whole, many missing digits or limbs or worse, but they’re not broken. Not least of these memorable names is the eponymous Uxo, the last Bomb Dog – a Colonel in the United States Military and the recipient of a Purple Heart, no less. And they’re what gives the story its heart, its love of the living over dead machines and bombs. It comes down to a contest, too, with the living breathing Uxo put up against a cold de-mining machine under the moniker Volkovoy.”

If you’ve not read it yet, “Uxo, Bomb Dog” is waiting for you – bookmark it for later if you’re busy.

And if this seems a little self-congratulatory, well, maybe it is – I’m proud we’re publishing again, and I’m proud we’re publishing such good material. But I think it’s more a case of congratulating Fintushel – and if a webzine can’t big-up its authors, what can it do, eh?

Wired interviews the VanderMeers, gives away chapbook

Cover art: Jeff VanderMeer - The Situation Those VanderMeers are everywhere at the moment – and not just in the traditional venues of genre fiction enthusiasts. Wired‘s GeekDads blog (which strikes me as a slightly sexist masthead – are there no GeekMums?) has an interview with Jeff and Ann VanderMeer that shows them off as candid, interesting and very smart people … and explains why they’re appearing in those unusual venues:

JV – “The main thing is, the internet and the way memes move now, there is no monolithic thing called “genre” or “literary mainstream” any more. There’s all of this fascinating cross-pollinations and collaborations that you never really saw before. […] I think I like to write stuff that can connect with different kinds of readers in different ways. Like, a fantasy reader is going to perceive The Situation one way, whereas somebody who works in front of a computer all day but doesn’t read fantasy is going to take something else out of it, for example.”

Well worth a read. And even though it’s well in advance of Friday Free Fiction, I might as well mention that Wired are giving away a PDF of Jeff VanderMeer’s new PS Publishing chapbook The Situation alongside the article. Bonus!

You can find out more about PS Publishing (an excellent UK-based bespoke small press) at their website – why not order something while you’re there? [Cover art image lifted from Wired interview]

UXO, BOMB DOG by Eliot Fintushel

As promised, original fiction returns to Futurismic – and how! We’re incredibly proud to be publishing Eliot Fintushel‘s story, and we hope you enjoy it too. So please use the comment form at the end to tell us (and Eliot!) what you thought of “Uxo, Bomb Dog”.

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Uxo, Bomb Dog

by Eliot Fintushel

My bomb dog Uxo, my sweetie, my pal, he sweated and huffed, tongue unscrolled, forelegs folded. His fur was matted and dripping.

I held Mumps back with both my arms around her shoulders. The kid had lobbed stones at old Ux and tied soup cans to his tail, but now she’d jump mines to pet him.

“Stay put, little one. Uxo’s pacing himself, is all.”

“You can beat that pile of tin, Uxy.” Mumps’s chin was tear wet. Her voice choked and tumbled over the words. “Damn Volkovoy! Damn him! Cheater!”

We stood on a hill overlooking the meadow. A bunch of other kids ambled behind us, rags and bones, scruffy faces, some little ones on the shoulders of the bigger. Bit by bit, as Uxo and the damn machine cleared the meadow, we’d advance to the new safe zone for a better look. Continue reading UXO, BOMB DOG by Eliot Fintushel