It’s the highlight of your week! It’s the blog-post that you seek! It strips the breath out of your lungs and makes your knees go weak! It’s … Friday Free Fiction!

(OK, so maybe I’ve been a little short on sleep this week. Don’t mind me – the links are good even if the filler isn’t, right? 🙂 )

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Manybooks.net provides us with stories from the really old-school …

• “The Unnecessary Man” by Randall Garrett
• “The Golden Judge” by Nathaniel Gordon
• “The Helpful Robots” by Robert J. Shea

…to the new-school:

• “Scratch Monkey” by Charles Stross (1993)
• “Agnosis” by Darren R. Hawkins (2008).

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Alastair Reynolds, in case you’re not familiar with the name, is one of Britain’s top-grade space opera writers. He’s just made an excerpt from House of Suns, his latest novel, available to read on his website.

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Time moves so fast – there’s already another issue of Clarkesworld Magazine!

This one has fiction from Stephen Graham Jones and Alexander Lumans; non-fiction from Richard Bowes, and Futurismic alumni Tobias Buckell interviewing Catherynne M. Valente.

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From Edward Schubert (via Slushmaster, and also by email from Dutch man-mountain and Interzone fiction editor Jetse de Vries):

To Readers of Science Fiction and Fantasy everywhere,

When you have something great, you want everyone to know. So you tell people about it. You share it. You pass it along to friends everywhere. Well, that’s what we’re doing with InterGalactic Medicine Show. We want to make sure everyone has had a chance to check out what we’re doing, so we’re offering up a sampling of our stories – for free.

During the month of February we are going to make one story from each of our first four issues available at no charge. Two stories will be set free on February 1^st, and two more on February 15^th. Just visit www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com and explore the table of contents; the free stories will be clearly marked.

What are you waiting for? Go take a look!

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Steven Brust emailed to tell me that his entire Firefly novel My Own Kind of Freedom is available on his website.

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The BBC has let loose a whole bunch of free Doctor Who eBooks at their website – the old-school ones, too (much better than the latest incarnation, IMHO – though YMMV).

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Free audio fiction (Geordie style): the Starship Sofa‘s latest audio story is Pat Murphy‘s “Going Through Changes“.

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Well, look at us getting all cosmopolitan! We received our first FFF submission from Denmark from Lise Andreason: “A Meeting“.

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Friday Free Fiction just wouldn’t be the same with the Friday Flash Fictioneers, now would it?

And I’m immensely proud to announce that Jay Lake appears to have taken me up on my invitation to join in. However, due to the wonders of timezones, it appears he posts his work long after this UK-based editor has gone to bed.

But so what if we link them a week later? Here’s last week’s offering: “Passive Voices” by Jay Lake.

(The good Mr Lake also let loose a poem entitled “Evolution In Action” this week, which I don’t think is quite as bad as he’s making it out to be.)

Another guest appearance emerged last Sunday from Dr Ian Hocking in the form of “The Pilgrim” – no idea if he’s going regular with flash or if that was just a one off. We’ll keep you posted.

Which brings us to the usual suspects: Gareth D Jones is caught in a “White-Out“, while Neil Beynon is waiting until “After The Rain” and Gareth L Powell is headed for “Woomera“.

Greg O’Byrne thinks he has located “Nirvana“, Shaun C Green has written a “Love Story” and Dan Pawley has been “Found In Evidence“.

And finally, yours truly found himself with an “Unwanted Passenger“.

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And there you have it – that should keep you busy for a little while, I’m guessing. In the mean time, don’t forget to send us your tips and notifications about free fiction in the wild – blatant self-pimping more than welcome.

Have a great weekend!

How alliterative a title is that, eh? 😉

Alliterative the date may be, but it’s not the richest haul of free reads we’ve had. Still, there’s plenty enough here to keep you entertained for seven days …

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A few from Manybooks.net:

• “The Quantum Jump” by Robert Wicks
• “Out Like a Light” and “Anything You Can Do …”  by Randall Garrett

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Another email from the sharp-eyed and well-connected (not to mention fabulously-named) Cole Kitchen:

“Another e-zine for the list: Allegory, the “tri-annual online
magazine of SF, fantasy & horror,”.

(I can’t find a back-issues archive on their site, but some of these can be found via the Internet Archive.)”

Thanks, Cole – added to the sidebar!

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Another new webzine on the block – albeit without any fiction content until the projected launch date of 1st March – is Oddlands Magazine, whose editor Soren Bask has just stepped out of the shadows. One to keep an eye on – and a new market for folk to submit to, of course. 🙂

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke appears to be doing some kind of running serial fiction thing over at the No Fear Of The Future group blog. Just posted is part three of “Memory”, but I assume you’ll want to start at the beginning.

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If I’m not very much mistaken, Peter Watts is also posting fictional snippets on his blog. “Job Security” certainly has his comments field buzzing, and rightly so.

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Free audio fiction! James Patrick Kelly, obviously pining for the halcyon days of reading his novel Look Into The Sun to the public of the interwebs (way back in the dark ages of, oooh, last year), has started doing the same with his Nebula-nominated story “Men Are Trouble“.

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Neil Beynon, fellow traveller of the Friday Flash Fiction train, is having a rather productive week. In addition to the usual FFF output (see below), he’s got a whole other story on his site: “Wide Open Space“.

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This is the second week in a row that a Futurismic staffer has had a story published. This week it’s the turn of blogger Tomas L. Martin, whose story “The Shogun and the Scientist” is now online at Aberrant Dreams.

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It’s a very thin week for the Friday Flash Fictioneers – a lot of us (including yours truly) appear to have had obstacles thrown in our way by that thing called life (which, despite being a great generator of stories, has a neat knack of preventing them being written). But a few of the troops are holding the fort:

Neil Beynon was late to last week’s offering, so “Silver” gets a plug this time round; his thoroughly punctual offering for this week is entitled “Fragments” – these in addition to the full story mentioned further up! Go, Neil!

New recruit Greg O’Byrne examines the “Life of Diamonds“; meanwhile, Gareth L Powell appears to have been doing some writing at the “Coffee House“.

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Non-fiction bonus! Via Warren Ellis‘s highly-trained gang of web-scouring super-monkeys at grinding.be (which anyone who digs Futurismic will probably love to bits and should subscribe to immediately):

“Stuart Home’s brilliant 1987 book THE ASSAULT ON CULTURE: UTOPIAN CURRENTS FROM LETTRISM TO CLASS WAR is available in full, here.”

As is pointed out, it’s sure to be dated. But even a dated political text can tell you a lot, if only about the time it was written. Right?

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That’s your lot – don’t forget to contact us with any tips, winks or blatant self-plugs you may have. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Who can you rely on to battle past technical issues and shyster hosting companies to bring you your weekly dose of free fiction on the interwebs?

Futurismic, that’s who!

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The retro selection from Manybooks.net:

• “Wizard” by Laurence Mark Janifer
• “The Winds of Time” by James H. Schmitz
• “Cat and Mouse” by Ralph Williams
• “Vigorish” by Randall Garrett
• “Shock Absorber” by E.G. von Wald
• “Mercenary” by D.M. Reynolds
• “Criminal Negligence” by Jesse Francis McComas
• “The Silk and the Song” by Charles Louis Fontenay
• “The Valley of the Flame” by Henry Kuttner

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Via Darren at UKSFBookNews:

“The fifth issue of the online magical realist fiction magazine, Serendipity, features work by Steven Savile, Lynn Bartels, Tony Murfin, Lady Charlotte Guest, Craig Laurance Gidney and Neil Ayres.”

Lovely – I’ve added Serendipity to the sidebar!

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Jay Lake‘s at it again, with a story short enough to qualify for the Flash Fictioneers … if you’d ever like to join in, Jay, please just let us know!

“…the original short story “Arrange the Bones“. At 1,000 words, this originally appeared in Say…Was that a Kiss? back in 2002, then reprinted by Prime Books in my 2004 collection, Dogs in the Moonlight. If you like the story, please consider supporting Fortress of Words and their Say… zine, as well as Prime Books.”

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An email from Sam J Miller:

“Hoped you might be able to include my semi-spec-fic short story, “Paper Bomb,” freshly-published in the new online issue of Pindeldyboz, in your next fabulous Friday Free Fiction communique.

Thanks a million for your excellent work in finding such great sci-fi to send around every week. It’s a high point of my Fridays.”

It’s a highlight of mine too, Sam – though as I’ve mentioned before, I merely collate the work of others and quote emails I’m sent. I am but the conduit! 😉

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From John Klima at Electric Velocipede:

“Of interest to me and my readers is that William Shunn‘s novelette “Not of this Fold” from his chapbook An Alternate History of the 21st Century is on the preliminary [Nebula novellette] ballot. […] To that end, I’ve posted (with Bill’s permission) a PDF of the story online.”

Congratulations to William – and to John as editor, too. I know we’re all about the free online fiction here, but there are some super print mags out there too, and Electric Velocipede is a charming little publication that’s well worth the subscription fee.

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Speaking of excellent print magazines* making award-nominated stories available for free, I should point out that Interzone has published the 2007 BSFA-Nominated story “The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter” by Alastair Reynolds, which is a great story that comes personally recommended by me, for what that’s worth.

[*Disclosure – I’m Interzone‘s Reviews Editor, but I thought it was an excellent magazine long before I started contributing to it. You can now subscribe electronically and avoid that tiresome Transatlantic postage business, too!]

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Subterranean Press are pumping out more material for free on their webzine:

“The Pile” by Michael Bishop.

“Dragon Chili: From the Grand Church Cookbook” by Joe R. Lansdale.

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A few words from Jeremy Tolbert:

“I slept very badly last night, and had a migraine to end all migraines. I’m slowly recovering this morning. I recently woke up and, along with this lingering headache, I found I have an overwhelming desire to give something away.

I’ve posted a story, “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You“, online under a Creative Commons license. It’s about death, Led Zeppelin, and how families cope.”

Jeremy also post-mortem’d the give-away and examined his motives for doing it – interesting reading for other aspiring writers.

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Hey, guess what? Futurismic’s own Fiction Editor Christopher East got one of his stories published at Hub Magazine, but he’s too modest to post about it himself. So it falls to me to blow his trumpet for him (ahem) – so go read “The Scarlet Number“.

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Friday Flash Fictioneers – form up and call ’em out! We’re a few short this week (albeit with a promise of imminent material from Neil Beynon), but we have a new recruit to fill out the ranks.

So, a warm welcome to Greg O’Byrne, who gives us “Dying In A Cold Dark Place“. Welcome aboard, Greg!

Elsewhere, Shaun C Green is interested in “This Urban Aesthetic“.

Meanwhile, in yet another example of synchronous and spontaneous picking of similar themes, we have two stories about starship pilots: Justin Pickard supplies the ultra-brief “Celerity“, while Gareth D Jones recounts “An Obscure Incident Somewhere in Deep Space”

Last but (hopefully) not least, yours truly heads back to his remixed hometown of New Southsea for a ferry-trip with “Charon“.

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Stop Press! Last-minute late-arrival bonus:

Solaris Books have made Deadstock by Jeffrey Thomas available to download for free. Yes, the whole book.

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OK folks, that’s your lot for this week! Don’t forget to drop us a line with any tips, plugs and self-promotion. In the meantime, thanks for reading – take care, and have a good weekend.