It’s Friday once again, and Friday is Free Fiction time here at Futurismic… a somewhat smaller batch this week, but still plenty to keep your eyeballs busy.

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A couple of novels at Manybooks:

• Probability Angels by Joseph Devon
• 2012: The Last Will and Testament of The Gods by Mike Cooper

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A lonesome short classic at Feedbooks:

• “Revenge” by Arthur Porges

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Polu Texni presents “Very Truly Yours, Part I” by Seth Gordon

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Strange Horizons presents “Greetings from Kampala” by Angela Ambroz

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Tor.com presents “Errata” by Jeff VanderMeer

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Jeff VanderMeer himself has a fictional snippet from his Ambergris world: “Zamilon in Waiting”

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Via Jim Steel:

Blood, Blade & Thruster is pulling the plug on itself on January 19. If you haven’t done so yet, go and download the pdfs of the magazines before it’s too late.

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Here’s Memory #31 by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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And now for our regular collection of stuff that SF Signal‘s all-hearing ear caught the rumblings of. First off, they’ve got a round-up of the latest additions to the Free Speculative Fiction site , which is probably big enough to keep you reading until summer arrives.

Then there’s an assortment of stuff they linked to through the week just gone:

• Weird Tales presents new fiction by Rachel Swirsky, Matthew Pridham, Karen Heuler, Micaela Morrissette, Ramsey Shehadeh, Chiles Samaniego, Karen Heuler, and Zoran Zivkovic
• Over at Scribd, Futurismic alumnus Tobias Buckell has posted his short story “The People’s Machine“
• Everyday Weirdness presents “One Summer Night” by Ambrose Bierce and “A Strange Tale of Cannibalism” by Lafacadio Hearn
• Eric Nylund offers the first 9 chapters of Mortal Coils as a PDF
• Catherine Asaro presents her novella “The Spacetime Pool” on Facebook
• Lou Antonelli is serializing his alternate history novel Dance With Me Henry
• BestScienceFictionStories.com presents “The Cauldron” by Rocky Keele
• Joel Sieh is publishing a new fantasy story in blog format called “Iron and Ash“.
• A R Yngve presents his own “Sleight of Hand“

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And finally some Friday Flash Fiction:

• “Lame” by Sarah Ellender
• “Some Kind of Superhero” and “Total Campaign Dominance” by Shaun C Green
• “Dummy” by Gaie Sebold

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And that’s about all we’ve got this week. Keep your plugs, tip-offs and recommendations coming in; deadline is 1800 GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!

So how’s the first full working week of the year been treating you? Yeah, me too… still, the weekend’s nearly here, and the weekend means free science fiction links at Futurismic! So here we go, fiction-fans:

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Here’s a bunch from Feedbooks, including the latest Futurismic reprint:

• “The Right People” by Adam Rakunas
• “The Panchronicon” by Harold Steele MacKaye
• “A Fine Fix” by Ray C Noll
• “Junior Achievement” by William M Lee

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Just the one over at Project Gutenberg:

• “A Fine Fix” by R C Noll

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And one at Manybooks:

• “The Doomsman” by Van Tassel Sutphen

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Here’s the latest issue of Apex Online:

• “Edison’s Dead Men” by Ed Turner
• “Starter House” by Jason Palmer
• “In Memory” by Eric James Stone
• “On the Shadow Side of the Beast” by Ruth Nestvold

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Strange Horizons presents “Sisters of the Blessed Diving Order of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew” by A C Wise

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Subterranean Online‘s Winter quarter kicks off with “Clinic” by Kris Nelscott

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Shira Lipkin strikes again! – this time with a story called “The Angel of Fremont Street” at ChiZine

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Chris Roberson‘s free stories are like buses; you wait for ages, then two come along at once::

• “Secret Histories: Peter R. Bonaventure, 1885“
• “Death on the Crosstime Express“

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We received a message from Kit O’Connell:

The Continuous Coast project – a Creative Commons-licensed shared world – just released three works of fiction as a preview of the world. The fiction is by Steven Brust, Reesa Brown, and myself.

We’ll keep you posted on the project as it develops (we’re in our beta/prologue phase now), but in the
meantime you can check out a few of our other online presences:

• Voices fromPort Outreach (an in-character blog)
• The Mediators (in-world Twitter stream)
• and Lufton Runner (our fictional concert venue where real musicians play)

Bravo – Futurismic loves Creative Commons projects! Go take a look and show your support.

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From EOS Books:

We’re a couple of weeks away from the release of Jonathan Barnes‘ next book, The Domino Men. And we’re so excited about it, that we are offering his entire first book, The Somnambulist, [to read] online for free.

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Here’s part 30 of Memory by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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And here’s all the other stuff captured by the diligent hearts of SF Signal:

• Afterburn SF presents “The Carrion Monster” By Tim McDaniel
• Best SF presents “Bean There” by Jack Skillingstead
• Weird Tales presents “The Last Great Clown Hunt” by Chris Furst
• Planet Magazine presents “The Tears of Lakshmi” by Ian James
• St. Martin’s Griffin presents “Countdown” by Jonathan Maberry [PDF download, sign-up required]
• MindFlights presents “Quanruzaman’s Gateway” by Peter Simon
• Big Pulp presents “Two Ravens” by Michael Turner
• Behind the Wainscot issue #9 presents fiction and poetry by Neil Ayres and E Sedia, Mariev Finnegan, Berrien C Henderson, Nicole Kornher-Stace, James Owens, Genevieve Valentine, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Ann Walters, F J Bergmann, and Marion Boyer
• The latest update at ChiZine presents fiction and poetry by Kurt Dinan, Shira Lipkin, Daniel A Rabuzzi, Jonathan Wood, M Frost, Maurice Oliver, and Jacqueline West
• Here’s the first excerpt from The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Volume One by Gordon Dahlquist; Bantam are serialising the whole thing, apparently.

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And here’s a little bit of Friday Flash Fiction for you to finish with:

• “I feel food about all of it so far… ” by Gaie Sebold (no, that title is not a typo, apparently)
• “Yn Gondoleyr” by Gareth D Jones (a translation into Manx of his story “The Gondolier”)
• “Duckling” by Neil Beynon

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And there you have it! As always, we have our ear to the ground for the rumble and thump of your tip-offs, gratuitous self-plugs and projects, so send ’em in – deadline is 1800 GMT every Friday. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Well, here we are in a brand new year – how did that happen so quickly?

Some of you will have been back at work today, while some of you are probably still trying to shake off hangovers from the last few days, (and some of us are caught between the two)… but you can all rest easy in the knowledge that I’ve been collecting free science fiction links for the last two weeks!

Your weekend reading starts here, ladies and gents:

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Here’s a bunch from Feedbooks:

• “Eight Keys to Eden” by Mark Irvin Clifton
• “The Jupiter Weapon” by Charles Louis Fontenay
• “Dead World” by Jack Douglas
• “Test Rocket!” by Jack Douglas
• “The Curse of Yig” by H P Lovecraft

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A couple at Manybooks:

• “The Undersea Tube” by L Taylor Hansen
• “The Beginning” by Henry Hasse

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And a singleton at Project Gutenberg:

• “Junior Achievement” by William Lee

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Here’s another freebie from Jay Lake: “Lux Fiat”

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Strange Horizons presents “Engines of Survival” by Larissa Kelly

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Hub Magazine presents “The Watchers at the Window” by Marie Faye Prior

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Clarkesworld presents:

• “Celadon” by Desirina Boskovich
• “Teaching Bigfoot to Read” by Geoffrey W Cole

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Via the SF Signal gang:

The good folks over at Snowbooks have posted a free short story from George Mann called “The Shattered Teacup”. It’s subtitled “A Maurice Newbury Investigation” which means it’s set in the Steampunk/Doctor Who world of his awesome novel The Affinity Bridge. Snowbooks has made the story available in both PDF and audio formats for your choice of reading and/or listening enjoyment.

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Madeline Ashby has a five-part speculative story over at the excellent Worldchanging site: “βoyfriend” follows a high-school girl of the near future in the run-up to Prom night, and is well worth a look.

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Some new titles have cropped up in Baen Books‘ free library

• Earthweb by Marc Stiegler
• Starliner by David Drake
• The Shadow of Saganami by David Weber

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Among a trio of new poems at Polu Texni is a subtly sf-nal piece called “Unruly Harvest” by friend-of-Futurismic Shira Lipkin.

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A note from Jake Freivald:

New free flash is up on Flash Fiction Online: “The Fallen Angel” by Mike Resnick and “As Their Eyes Touched God” by Robin Gillespie are the speculative fiction pieces for the month.

Cheers, Jake!

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Via the newly-revived Genre Files:

Stumbled across a new webzine the other day that looks rather interesting. It’s called Three Crow Press and it’s produced by relatively new independent genre publisher Morrigan Books.

Predominantly dark fantasy and horror according to the strapline, so not really prime Futurismic fodder… but it certainly deserves a place in the Free Fiction Sidebar of Justice. 🙂

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If you want to catch up with the latest fiction publications over at Book View Cafe, you can check out the lists of short stories, novellas and novel excerpts, which are updated on a weekly basis.

By the way, there’ll be more news to come regarding Futurismic and Book View Cafe – watch this space!

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And here’s the inevitable collection of goodies that SF Signal caught:

• Mindflights presents “Gaming Real Life” by K C Shaw and “Santa Is My Homeboy” by Rachel V Olivier
• Afterburn SF presents “Ismay’s Run” by Joanne Hall
• “Kat and Mouse: Guns for Hire” is a new, weekly web serial by Abner Senires about a pair of guns-for-hire trying to eke out a living in the 2042 in the California Free State metroplex of Bay City.
• Grantbridge Street & other misadventures presents: The Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction comic book adaptation of Michael Moorcock‘s Behold the Man [editor’s note – I’m not entirely sure this work is out of copyright; also, the page features a rather annoying autoplaying flash music gizmo which you’ll probably want to scroll down and deactivate right away. Why anyone would choose to make their site *more* like MySpace is quite beyond me, but there you go; it takes all sorts.]
• The latest issue of Ray Gun Revival has fiction from Clinton Lawrence, Alice M Roelke, Drew Arrants, Richard S Levine, Timothy A Sayell, Martin Turton, M Keaton, Keanan Brand, and Sean T M Stiennon
• AntipodeanSF has its latest issue up with short speculative fiction stories by David McVeigh, Richard Kerslake, Mark Farrugia, Mark Tremble, Marian Stone, Shaun A Saunders, Anna Potts, KJ Hannah Greenberg, David Such, and Simon Petrie
• Issue #14 of The Future Fire presents stories by John Kratman, Rick Novy, and Richard Thieme
• The Scientific Indian presents: “Live and Exclusive” by Aditya Sudarshan

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And finally, some Friday Flash: since the last round-up, Neil Beynon has published “Beats” and “New Space“, while Gareth D Jones has delivered – appropriately enough – “Another Year“, and Shaun C Green – even more appropriately – brings us “Two Thousand and Eight“.

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And that’s the lot – more than enough to keep you busy there, I’m thinking. Don’t forget we’re always open for your tip-offs and plugs, so keep ’em coming… but for now, Happy New Year to you all!

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the days to start getting longer again. Still, we’re nearly there now, and it’s holiday time for most of us – so put your feet up and enjoy some free science fiction stories, why don’tcha?

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Here’s a few from Feedbooks:

• “Unthinkable” by Rog Phillips
• “Upstarts” by L J Stecher
• “True Names” by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum

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A reminder from EOS/HarperCollins:

For November and December only, click to download a free eBook of Adam Troy Castro’s Emissaries From the Dead.

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Strange Horizons presents “How to Hold Your Breath” by Meredith Schwartz

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Tor.com presents “Firstborn” by Brandon Sanderson (the guy who’s finishing off the Wheel of Time series, apparently).

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Mindflights presents “The Void Test” by Therese L Arkenberg.

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Polu Texni presents part 2 of “Running Free” by Mark Sherwood

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It’s been a while since the last instalment, but things are back on track with Memory #29 from Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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Something more than a trifle blasphemous from Hal Duncan:

See, y’all know Revelation, right? The last book of the New Testament, the one with all the Antichrist and Armageddon gubbins, all the Rapture and wrath of God malarky? You may not have read it, but you’re bound to be familiar with its zany eschatological content, even if only by way of horror movies and heavy metal lyrics. Well, if you have read it, you may recall the lines where a curse is laid out on anyone that fucks around with the text. Add to the words of this book, we’re told, and that’s bad news, baby. Take away from the words of this book, and that’s just as bad. We’re talking biblical plagues, baby, a pointy reckoning upon anyone who adds to or takes away from the words of this book.

Course, it doesn’t say anything about changing the order of those words.

Which is exactly what he has done; violent eRa is a story told using all the words from the book of Revelation in a different order, featuring God as the villain of the piece. Not that Duncan seems particularly bothered by the risk of a curse, anyway…

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SpaceWesterns presents:

• “Le Grand Bazar” by Dr Philip Edward Kaldon
• “Droidtown Blues” by Camille Alexa

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Here are the extras that the SF Signal crew picked up:

• Jeff Patterson presents “Thrilling Holiday Tales“
• Aphelion webzine has just released issue #128
• Scott Sigler is serialising his new novel Contagious as a string of PDFs delivered by RSS. Neat.
• The Edge of Propinquity #36 features Jennifer Brozek, Rick Silva, James M Sullivan, Ivan Ewert and Eric R Lowther
• Revolution SF presents “Stormsong” by John E Rogers, Jr
• Elizabeth Hand is in a seasonal frame of mind with “Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol“
• Anthony G Williams has set free his novel Scales

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And here’s some Friday Flash Fiction, some of which has a festive flavour:

• “Serenity Valley” by Phred Serenissima
• “Bitterness the Star” by Shaun C Green
• “Last Christmas” by Justin Pickard
• “Jetsam” by Gareth L Powell
• “Baubles” by Neil Beynon
• “An Dùsgadh Dàlach” by Gareth D Jones (which is his story “Delayed Reaction” translated into Scottish Gaelic)

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And that’s about your lot. Friday Free Fiction is going to go into hibernation until the new year (because most everyone will be too busy to pay any attention, AMIRITE?), but your tip-offs and plugs are always welcome for the next instalment on January 2nd. Adios!

Outside my flat it’s cold, damp and very dark. Indoors, however, I can bathe in the comforting glow of a flatscreen monitor replete with links to free science fiction stories available online… and what better way to get into the seasonal spirit than by sharing, eh?

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A couple of classics from Manybooks:

• “The Gallery” by Roger Phillips Graham
• “Unthinkable” by Roger Phillips Graham

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Here’s a handful from Feedbooks:

• “True Names” by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum
• “Starman’s Quest” by Robert Silverberg
• “The Last Evolution” by John W Campbell Jr
• “A Scientist Rises” by Desmond Winter Hall

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Via OldMiser and others, another freebie from Gwyneth Jones:

Castles Made Of Sand […] should have had a fortunate début, given that the first episode had just won a major award when it came out, but it was all a bit of a rush, and I’ve always wanted to go back and give the script a scale and polish, nothing too painful. So here it is, a few pages shorter, bloopers excised and every sentence a bit tighter, tho’ possibly only the writer can tell.

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A couple of republications from Jay Lake – “The Golden Whip” and “Real North”

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COSMOS Magazine presents “Delivery” by Trent Jamieson

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A message from Ben Rawluk:

I have a couple more short-short SF/weird fictions up at my blog: “Sarah in the Wheat“, “Street Performances” and “It’s All Biohazards Down Here“.

As well, I’ve posted a couple more of my Filthy Postcard Stories series, #3, #4 and #5.

Cheers, Ben!

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Strange Horizons presents “The Same Old Story” by Naomi Bloch

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The new issue of Ideomancer (which should really get itself an RSS feed) features fiction and poetry by George S Walker, A C Wise, Rachel Swirsky, Marsheila Rockwell, David Kopaska-Merkel and J C Runolfson.

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Another update from Subterranean Online; I don’t usually link to podcast stories here (simply because so many other places already do) but I thought I’d break ranks for this one:

…we’re capping off the fall issue with a real corker — one of Alastair Reynolds’ fine space opera novellas, read by Sam Mowry. Head over and check out Thousandth Night, which was the jumping off point for Al’s most recent novel, House of Suns.

Great writer, Al Reynolds; go listen.

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And here’s the stuff that SF Signal‘s immense trawler net caught that I’d have otherwise missed:

• Vonda McIntyre has made some of her fiction available for free download in various formats, including her novel The Moon and the Sun
• Matthew Jarpe has released “City of Reason“
• Michael Swanwick presents his flash fiction story “Like the Boiled Eggs in Isaac Asimov“, inspired by Janet Kagan, and the story behind the story about its creation
• Mindflights presents “Demons Without, Demon Within” by Scott M Sandridge
• Every Day Fiction presents:
  • “Waiting to Pounce” by Steve Goble
  • “The Wizard’s Walk” by Robert Goffeney
  • “Death is a Weird Shade of Pink” by M Sherlock

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And to finish, a few bits of Friday Flash Fiction:

• “Blood and Snow” by Neil Beynon
• “Headlines” by Gaie Sebold
• “Fear a’ Ghondòla” by Gareth D Jones – a Gaelic translation of of his story “The Gondolier”

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And there you have it. Don’t forget to let us know if there’s something you think I might miss! In the meantime, have a great weekend.