Good grief, it’s Friday again! Where does the time go? Well, some of it obviously goes into scouring the RSS feeds of the genre scene in search of free fiction for you to read…

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Two shorts and a novel at Manybooks:

• The Wonder by J D Beresford
• “The Barbarian” by Poul Anderson
• “He’ll Always Have Paris” by Joseph Devon

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There’s a couple at Feedbooks:

• “The Man Who Came Early” by Poul William Anderson (insert your own joke here, ladies)
• “The Raid on the Termites” by Paul Frederick Ernst

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Here’s one at Afterburn SF: “The Ambassador” by Mark Lawrence

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The Fantasy & Science Fiction gang have another free sample up for your perusal: “The Only Known Jump Across Time” by Eugene Mirabelli

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COSMOS Magazine has published one of its seemingly irregular fiction pieces in the form of the post-Singularity tale “A Place to Call Home” by Amber D Sistla

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Fresh fiction from Mindflights: “The Book Signing” by Valerie L Smith

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From Eos Books:

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

Well, you heard ’em – get to it!

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Strange Horizons presents the concluding part of “Return” by Eric Vogt

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Via just about everyone, The New Yorker has a story by Jonathan Lethem called “Lostronaut”

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Futurismic alumnus Tobias Buckell has a bunch of his stuff to try, including a big chunk of his latest novel, Sly Mongoose:

… I’ve folded the first third into an RTF file and put it up online, just like my segments for Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin. All three can be found around the website, and the broken links some reported have been fixed. So here they are:

• Crystal Rain
• Ragamuffin
• Sly Mongoose

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There’s three fresh pieces at Byzarium:

• “Fists of Felt” by Nathan Crowder
• “Never on a Birthday” by Patty Jansen
• “Puppet Strings” by Terry Ollila

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Via SF Signal:

• The November issue of Aphelion features stories from by T Richard Williams, Scott T Barnes, Joshua L Hamilton, E S Strout, Mary Brunini McArdle, Jeani Rector, Casey Callaghan, Ash Hibbert, K A Masters, Joel Doonan, and Kim Rush (phew!)

• Electric Spec comes as a PDF you can download. The new issue has stories from Tyree Campbell, S Hutson Blount, Jason K Chapman, Lyle Skains, and Bob Burnett

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Big Pulp presents “Save Tomorrow With a Smiley” by James Bloomer

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Here’s this week’s selection of Friday Flash Fiction:

• “Signs” by Shaun C Green
• “The Day the Aliens Came” by Neil Beynon
• “Sleep Now” by Gareth L Powell
• “Walker” by Phred Serenissima
• “Memories of Tiffin” by Gaie Sebold

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Non-fiction bonus! Locus Online is hosting a PDF version of the October 2008 issue of Locus Magazine.

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Well, that’s all for this week. You know the drill by now with letting us know about anything you or your friends are doing in the free fiction bracket, right? Right – deadline 1800GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!

It’s Friday evening here in the UK, which can only mean one thing – namely, that I’ve been sat at the keyboard bashing together your weekly selection of free science fiction to read on the intartoobs. Here we go, fiction-fans…

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There’s a lone novel at Manybooks.net:

• Mind + Body by Aaron Dunlap

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There’s some old-school classics at Feedbooks:

• “The Eternal Wall” by Raymond Z Gallun
• “The Planet Strappers” by Raymond Z Gallun
• “The Cavern of the Shining Ones” by Hal K Wells

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There’s a new edition of Clarkesworld Magazine, containing (among other good non-fictional stuff):

• “Idle Roomer” by Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn
• “Batch 39 and the Deadman’s Switch” by Simon DeDeo

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Here’s the usual monthly foursome from Apex Online:

• “A Splash of Colour” by William T Vandemark
• “The New Breed” by Michael A Burstein
• “Take Your Daughters to Work” by Livia Llewellyn
• “Behold: Skowt!” by Jason Heller

Plus some special Election Horror:

• “Plebiscite AV3X” by Jason Fischer
• “Shaded Streams Run Clearest” by Geoffrey W Cole

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This week’s fictional output at Strange Horizons is the first part of “Return” by Eric Vogt.

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Meanwhile, over at Subterranean Online there’s…

… a brand new story by recent Campbell award-winner, Mary Robinette Kowal. We hope you enjoy “Waiting for Rain” but should also point out that Mary’s posted a different, shorter version of the tale at her website. Read them both — we had trouble deciding which version to buy!

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From Chris Roberson:

The good people at Pyr have published an original short story of mine, “Ill Met in Elvera,” as part of their “Sample Chapter” program.

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Via SF Signal:

• Revolution SF presents “Night of Their Conversion” by Patrice Sarath
• MindFlights presents “Worlds Apart” by J.L. Gadberry
• Afterburn SF presents “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving

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Here’s last week’s late Friday Flash:

• “Money” by Gaie Sebold
• “Silverlight” by Neil Beynon
• “Brute Force and Ignorance” by Phred Serenissima

And this week we have:

• “The Manumitters” by Phred Serenissima
• “Swimming in the Electric Ocean” by Sarah Ellender

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And there we have it, folks; should keep you busy for a while. Don’t forget to keep sending in your plugs and tip-offs and blatant self-pimpage; deadline 1800GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!

Well, my guess is most of you are more focused on dressing up Halloween-style and hitting the town tonight than wondering where your next fix of free fiction is coming from. But no seasonal holiday can stand in the way of Futurismic‘s relentless cataloguing of free genre stuff to read on the intertubes, so you’ll at least have something with which to sooth away the hangovers tomorrow afternoon… 🙂

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Here’s a few from Feedbooks:

• “The Day Time Stopped Moving” by Bradner Buckner
• “Hellhound of the Cosmos” by Clifford D. Simak
• “The Risk Profession” by Donald Edwin Westlake

And another item from the Futurismic back-catalogue, the ultra-dark super-snark of Alex Wilson‘s “Dry Frugal with Death Rays“.

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News from John “Electric Velocipede” Klima:

In case you’re wondering about what the contents of the new issue are like, here’s a quick sampler:

• “The Oldest Man on Earth” by Patrick O’Leary
• “Sitting Round the Stewpot” by Patricia Russo
• “Notes on the Dissection of the Imaginary Beetle” by Jonathan Wood

There will more to come from the issue. You can check out the full table of contents, which has links to excerpts from all the fiction and poetry in the issue.

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Via a number of sources, both blogs and email (so blanket thanks to everyone!), Technology Review recently ran a short story called “Glass” by Daryl Gregory.

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Another rogue DVD extra just cropped up at Shadow Unit.

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Via the eternally vigilant SF Signal:

Afterburn SF has published “Vigilant” by Mike Rimar.

MindFlights has published “Good News from a Foreign Land” by Diane Gallant.

And there’s a selection of four from Aberrant Dreams:

• “Souling Night” by Kelly Dunn
• “The Girl Who Swallowed the Sky” by Jacqueline Bowen
• “Metal” by Larry Dunn
• “The Bloodstone Queen” by Verna McKinnon

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This week’s story at Strange Horizons is “Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman.

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Tor.com has a free story called “A Water Matter” by Futurismic alumnus (and all-round jolly nice chap) Jay Lake.

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Via Forbidden Planet International:

Dominic Green, an author some may remember from his appearances in the august pages of that pillar of the literary SF community, Interzone, is giving up on trying to get novels published. Despite his Interzone credentials and a Hugo nomination in 2006 he’s had no luck with most publishers (a plight I’m sure many writers will empathise with) and has decided to post them online, free, so at least perhaps some readers can have a look and hopefully enjoy them. There are two adult works – Abaddon and Smallworld – and a young adult work, Saucers and Gondoliers.

That’s presumably not the same Dominic Green who was my former landlord…

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This week’s new material at SpaceWesterns is suitably horrific for the season:

• “In the Walls of Erxz” by H.P. Lovecraft & Kenneth J. Sterling
• “The Mound, Part VII” by H.P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop

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More spookiness over at Subterranean Online:

… a vintage tale by SubPress favorite Norman Partridge […] “Apotropaics“, a very different, and very chilling take on vampires.

Good grief. Am I the only person in genre fiction who’s bored of hearing about vampires, zombies and other lesser-known strains of the undead? Just askin’.

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We’re up to iteration 28 of Jayme Lynn Blaschke‘s Memory.

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A last-minute arrival from Jake Freivald at Flash Fiction Online:

There’s a new story up for Halloween: “Ray the Vampire” by Mercedes M. Yardley. The rest of our November issue will be published next week.

Cheers, Jake! See? More vamps. Sheesh.

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Finally, a couple of non-fiction bonuses:

First of all, Robert J Sawyer recommends a free download of The Atlas of Cyberspace by Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin. Looks like it covers both the real and fictional manifestations of cyberspace, too, so plenty of geek points there.

Secondly, Gary Gibson says:

If you either fancy yourself as a writer, or you’re shopping your first novel around, or even several books deep into a career, you could do a lot worse than reading The Career Novelist, by American super-agent Donald Maass…

Fortunately, you can now download that book entirely free in PDF format directly from the Maass agency.

It apparently (and synchronously) comes recommended by Robert Sawyer as an essential book for any aspiring writer, also.

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Well, that’s your lot, folks. Keep the plugs, tip-offs and recommendations coming in (deadline 1800 GMT every Friday!), and have yourselves a great Halloween, Samhain, or non-denominational two-days-off, which ever you prefer. Adios!