Ah, Friday afternoon – the sweet smell of impending freedom from the workplace. And the appetising aroma of all the free genre fiction the web has to offer, too! Get busy with the buffet…

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A trio in the inbox from Manybooks.net:

• “Pandemic” by Jesse F Bone
• “The Star Hyacinths” by James H Schmitz
• “Next Door, Next World” by Robert Donald Locke

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Feedbooks‘ science fiction output has this week consisted entirely of rolling out stories from the Futurismic back-catalogue in useful formats (as mentioned earlier), so stock up on some of our greatest hits for your commute:

• “Real Death” by Terry Hayman
• “The Existential Cure” by Will McIntosh
• “Better Sweets To Prove Than Sleep” by Lisa Mantchev
• “Strike A Pose” by Donnárd Ricardo Sturgis
• “Push Patterns” by Jay Campbell
• “His Whore The Vector” by David McGillveray (who has a fresh story about to appear next month)
• “The Rivers of Eden” by Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold

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The latest dose from Apex Online is from George Mann, top dog at Solaris Books, no less: “The Nature Of Blood“.

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Small Beer Press are on the give-away tip once more; right now you can get the entirety of The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum in digital format over there.

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John Joseph Adams is celebrating the release of his new Seeds Of Change anthology by releasing a bunch of stories and excerpts from it for free on its website. You can find links to them all in various convenient formats like PDF and MobiPocket, but here are links direct to the HTML versions of the full stories to be getting on with:

• “The Future by Degrees” by Jay Lake
  
• “Arties Aren’t Stupid” by Jeremiah Tolbert
  
• “Resistance” by Tobias S. Buckell
  

I might point out that all three of those writers have worked with Futurismic; Jay Lake has a story here co-written with Ruth Nestvold, and both Tobias and Jeremy have been bloggers here. A lot of talent passes through this site, y’know. 🙂

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Via the Scalzi:

Mary Robinette Kowal has a page that will point you to some of her fiction online. Find out why she’s this year’s Campbell Award winner, and enjoy!

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There’s yet more “deleted scenes” in the seemingly endless stream of DVD extras from the production team at Shadow Unit.

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Via Nathan Lilly, here’s what’s new at SpaceWesterns.com:

• “The Hard Deal” by John M. Whalen – A young man plans revenge on a rich industrialist for the death of his father, but his plans go awry when he encounters an indigenous life form.
• “Corazón”—Part 2 by Jens Rushing – Jens Rushing brings us a Space Western/Fantasy, in three parts. In Part 2 Dixie O’Dell winds her way along the Ghost Trail to track down Gomez.
• Space Western Senryū Contest Winners by Alana Joli Abbott, Mark L. Van Name & Seamus Kevin Fahey

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Email from Lise Andreasen in Copenhagen:

Here is Chapter 4 in my Intervention story.

And as you’re supposed to do with chapter 4 of an SF story, it’s animated. So… does 23 pictures qualify as flash? Oh no, wait. A picture is worth a 1000 words.

Thanks, Lise!

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And finally, a trio of Friday Flashes:

• Greg O’Byrne doesn’t supply a pronunciation guide for “Patselonkaloman“
• Phred Serenissima discusses “A Public Matter“
• Gareth L Powell is hanging out in “Roswell“

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There we go – should keep you busy for a while. In the meantime, we need your plugs and tip-offs; deadline is 1800 GMT on Friday, as always. Have a great weekend!

It’s Friday, and that can mean one thing and one thing only – it’s free fiction time! Let’s see what we’ve got in the magic bag of RSS this week…

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A couple from Manybooks.net:

• “The Machine That Saved the World” by Murray Leinster
• “The Success Machine” by Henry Slesar

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A couple at FeedBooks:

• “Citadel” by Algis Budrys
• “A Choice of Miracles” by James A Cox

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And a couple at Gutenberg:

• “Pandemic” by Jesse F. Bone
• “Next Door, Next World” by Robert Donald Locke

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Via Klima’s Weekend Getaway at Tor.com:

I had suggested that people read stories from a generation different from the one they belonged to. To that end, we have:

“The First Commandment” by Gregory Benford
“The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small” by Chris Roberson

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If I’m not very much mistaken, Peter Watts is sneaking out microfiction at his blog again. Much like Futurismic‘s very own Mac Tonnies, Watts is “Loving the Alien“:

We sleep. The chimp makes grudging corrections to a myriad small trajectories. I set the alarm to wake me every few weeks, burn a little more of my candle just to check up on it; but it doesn’t seem to be trying to slip anything past me this time.

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Here’s issue 4 of Oddlands Magazine:

Short Fiction

• 
  

It’s a weekday, and it’s the first of the month, which means that there’s a brand new original science fiction story here on Futurismic for you to read!

Alex Wilson‘s “Dry Frugal With Death Rays” is a superb slice of dark satire, so I’d like to suggest you start there before getting to grips with our usual round-up of free fiction elsewhere in the intertubes.

All done? OK, here we go…

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Just two titles from Manybooks.net:

• “Security” by Ernest M Kenyon
• Mars Girl by Jeff Garrity

And nothing at all from FeedBooks this week… I guess many of the volunteers who transcribe these stories are now burdened with summertime duties involving younglings. Hey, everyone needs a holiday, right?

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John “Electric Velocipede” Klima is climbing onto the Friday freebies bandwagon over at Tor.com:

Welcome to what will be a regular Friday feature from me. I am going to post a Weekend Getaway every Friday. This will be a link to a piece of short fiction that’s available online for free. I’ll discuss the piece(s) and give you links. Then you feel free to play in the comments and provide your thoughts on the work.

Here are the stories:

• “The Chiaroscurist” by Hal Duncan
• “The Way He Does It” by Jeffrey Ford

You’ll need to visit the Tor site to catch the discussion, of course, but I’ve provided the direct links to the stories for those who want to get straight to the action.

That post is from last week, by the way – a downside of being UK-based is that my Friday is finishing just as most of the States is digging into the second cup of coffee, so sometimes things get posted too late for me to add. 🙁

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While we’re talking about Hal Duncan, the man himself reports that there’s “a wee fairy story of mine called “The Behold of the Eye“” available in the latest issue of Lone Star Stories.

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More Shadow Unit DVD extras: “Two-Handed Grip“, and the tenth part of Vigil (which has no title I can accurately discern).

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Apex Online‘s latest fiction contribution is “In the Seams” by Andrew C Porter:

There isn

Good grief, it’s Friday again – and Friday means free fiction! Here’s what flowed through town on the RSS river this week:

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From Manybooks.net:

• “The Memory of Mars” by Raymond F Jones (“As soon as I’m well we’ll go to Mars for a vacation again,” Alice would say. But now she was dead, and the surgeons said she was not even human. In his misery, Hastings knew two things: he loved his wife; but they had never been off Earth!)
• “Hail to the Chief” by Gordon Randall Garrett

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More Who stuff from FeedBooks:

• Doctor Who and the Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell

And some shorts by Philip Francis Nowlan:

• “The Prince Of Mars Returns“
• “Armageddon 2419AD“

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Apex Online have a story by none other than Nick Mamatas, outgoing Clarkesworld editor: “Summon, Bind, Banish“.

Alick, in Egypt, with his wife, Rose. Nineteen aught-four. White-kneed tourists. Rose, several days into their trip, starts acting oddly, imperiously. She has always wanted to travel, but Alick