Like a beachcomber, I’ve been plucking bits of genre fiction flotsam from the beach of the intarwebs …

***

A couple of old-school novels from Manybooks.net:

• The Defiant Agents by Andre Norton (“Alien technology scavenged by U.S. and Russian scientists has started a race to colonize planets outside our solar system — and the U.S. scientists are losing! In a desperate move the U.S. government decides to use a group of Apache volunteers in an experimental attempt to colonize a primitive planet, but before they can even begin their spaceship crashes on the planet Topaz …”)
• Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton (According to the notes, “[t]his tale of scientific rejuvenation was the number one best seller of 1923.” Crikey!)

***

Here’s the fifth and final instalment of the WTFBBQ extras/teaser/supplementary gubbins from Shadow Unit:

Chaz craned his neck to peer over Brady’s shoulder at the kebabs. “Don’t leave them too long,” he said, because he knew it would be annoying.

Lau grinned at Chaz across the barbeque, and the heat in his face had nothing to do with the gas fire. “You have no sense of self-preservation.”

Less than a fortnight until the season finale, folks!

***

We’ll let the Subterranean gang speak for themselves:

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Subterranean Online. First up, we have Part One of a new novella by SubPress favorite Norman Partridge. Hit the pavement with “Road Dogs,” but be sure to pack the proper armament.

Meanwhile, Joe R. Lansdale’s Unchained again, this time on the subject of Henry Kuttner. If that’s not enough new material, take a quick look at Kealan Patrick Burke’s review of Thomas Ligotti’s worthy gathering of tales, Teatro Grottesco.

***

I got some email from Sam J Miller:

Two weeks ago, the new issue of the fabulous free online sci-fi magazine Atomjack went live and it includes my story “Monkey Heaven“, narrated by a dissatisfied helper monkey. Hoped you might be able to include a link to it when you do this Friday’s fabulous free fiction lineup.

We’d have done it even without the flattery, Sam – thanks for the tip!

***

A couple of brief mentions cribbed from SF Signal (who in turn got them via Locus Online):

• Fantasy Book Spot offers “Nano Comes to Clifford Falls” by Nancy Kress. (I’ve heard this as a podcast, I believe; excellent story.)
• Cosmos has “Not Enough Stars in the Night” by Brendan DuBois.

***

The unstoppable (and, sadly, still unlinkable) Cole Kitchen brings yet more additions and alterations to the Sidebar of Free Fictional Justice::

• Flashquake – a paying online market for ‘flash literature’, no less
• Goblin Fruit – a webzine devoted to “poetry of the fantastical”
• COSMOS Magazine offers online fiction as well as pop science articles.
• Apex Digest seems to have changed its name to Apex Online. Starting in the first week in June they plan to become a weekly publication.
• Abyss & Apex (which is not the same as Apex Online). Their issue 26 is now up.

Thanks, Cole. I was pretty sure I had added Abyss & Apex before now, but it appears I hallucinated that particular episode. I think it’s time I cut down on the coffee and Red Bull …

CORRECTION: From Jason Sizemore (see comment below): “Apex Digest is still a print publication. Apex Online (which we’ve been doing for three years) is a separate entity. The change is that Apex Online will become weekly instead of monthly.” Sorry Jason – I’ll check my facts properly in future!

***

So, that brings us to the Friday Flash Fictioneers – let’s see who we have this week:

• Greg O’Byrne missed the boat last week (sorry Greg) with this reworking of his earlier piece “Interstellar“.
• Ian Hocking delivers his microscopic pieces (which he limits to a mere 100 words) in audio format (because, like most Mac users I know, he’s an insufferable show-off*); today’s offering is called “Rescue“
• Neil Beynon gets nostalgic when he thinks about “Mary“.
• I’m not even going to ask Gareth L Powell about his “Brown Water“.
• Clive Birnie aims to strike terror into the hearts of all web2.0 enthusiasts by explaining “How Twitter Stole His Life“.
• Sarah Ellender examines some of the perils and pitfalls of urban living in “A Stupid Place To (Jurassic) Park“.
• And in the midst of all this fictional frivolity, Greg O’Byrne returns to remind us “What Really Matters“.

***

That’s your lot, folks. Don’t forget to keep sending us your plugs and tip-offs … and there’s still time to apply to be a blogger here at Futurismic, too. Have a great weekend!

[* He’s a lovely man, really; I don’t hold the Mac stuff against him. Not much, anyway. 😉 ]

It’s a slim week for free fiction once again, but we’ve still scoured the web for every morsel we could find. And isn’t anything a feast to a starving person? So get stuck in!

***

One story and one novel from Manybooks.net:

• Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy (Super-mega-old-school – published 1887!)
• “The Airlords of Han“ by Philip Francis Nowlan (Not so old – published 1928)

***

Episode 7 of Shadow Unit is Elizabeth Bear’s “Overkill“:

It always started with the phone.

Tonight, that was the only familiar thing, because when Chaz Villette woke groaning to its warble the first thing he remembered was that he wasn’t in his own bed. The second thing he remembered was to try not to disturb the warm, heavy weight pillowed on his numb left arm as he fumbled for the night stand with his right. Her hair was in his mouth, her breath warm against his neck as he opened the phone without bothering to squint at the name on the display. He whispered, “Villette.”

***

The thirteenth instalment of Memory will hopefully not prove unlucky for Jayme Lynn Blaschke:

Parric’s wingtip slapped Flavius with a glancing blow across the side of his head, sending him sprawling to the ground. Flavius sprang back up, his face scarlet and eyes blazing.

“Wha’d ya go and do that for?” he shouted at Parric, one fist held ready as his other hand rubbed the side of his head.

“Your obsessings with the Empress is getting you dead once already,” Parric shot back, his featherscales ruffled with agitation. “And almosting me, too. You are needing to self-examining, Flavius, and asking yourself if your ruttings with the Empress are worth the consequences.”

***

After a brief interlude Warren Ellis‘s Freakangels are back for episode 13. If you’ve been following it, you’ll know it’s already showing lots of promise. If you’ve not been following it, why not start now, huh?

***

And let’s round it all off with the measured marching pace of the Friday Flash Fictioneers:

• Neil Beynon seems to have sustained a nasty “Fracture” during his holiday in New Zealand (of which I am not even slightly jealous)
• Gareth L Powell takes the “Last Dance With Alice“
• Dan Pawley‘s back in the saddle after some “Dead Time“
• Shaun C Green reports in from the “Interdiction Zone“
• Gaie Sebold has been conducting “An Experiment“
• Phred Serenissima remembers “Daddy’s Girl“

***

Looks like that’s your lot for this week – though there’s still masses of good stuff over in the Sidebar Of Free-Fictional Justice, so why not do another webzine a favour and pay them a visit?

In the meantime, keep us posted with your tips – and have a great weekend!

Another seven days have passed in the magical land of Intarwub, and they have deposited the usual cargo of free fictional nuggets on their way through; consider this your menu, your guide, your pre-flight check-list …

***

A single full book (and a very old one at that) from Manybooks.net:

• Pharaoh’s Broker: Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner by Ellsworth Douglass

***

Unpublished Heinlein news from Subterranean Online:

“… we’re delighted to bring to light a teleplay co-written by Robert A. Heinlein more than 50 years ago. Delilah and the Space Rigger, is based, of course, on the classic short story. For insight into the practical way in which Heinlein approached writing for the screen, we’re also printing John Scalzi’s introduction.”

***

From Cory Doctorow:

“I’ve just put up my site for Little Brother, my young adult novel about hacker kids who use technology to reclaim the Bill of Rights from the DHS after a terrorist attack on San Francisco.”

Being as it’s a Doctorow title, it comes in many flavours and there are many things you are legally allowed to do with it – pretty much anything except sell it for money.

***

Eos are giving away the entirety of Sarah Douglass’s The Serpent Bride as an ebook:

Rescued from unspeakable horror, Ishbel Brunelle has devoted her life to a Serpent cult that reads the future in the entrails of its human sacrifices. But the Serpent has larger plans for Ishbel than merely being archpriestess, plans that call for a dangerous royal marriage balancing on the edge between treachery and devotion, and an eerie, eldritch warning: Prepare for the Lord of Elcho Falling . . .

A bit fantasy for Futurismic readers, perhaps, but an entire free book is not to be sniffed at.

***

An email from John T Cullen:

Hi, Futurismic – please check out the free novels and other work at http://www.johntcullen.com/.

I’m the former editor of the late Far Sector SFFH, once the oldest professional webmag of SF/F/H. I’m also the second person in history to release serial chapters of whole novels (1996-7). I think we have a new pioneering effort going on, to be explained in a year or two if it works out. Please come visit.

I remain to be convinced of the validity of that serial-chapter-release business (wasn’t that the standard publishing business model of the Victorian era? Edit in light of clarification from Mr Cullen: serial chapters online), but Mr Cullen sure does have a whole lot of work there on his site. Go take a look.

***

Yet more WTFBBQ action from Shadow Unit:

Esther Falkner spent twenty minutes wondering what to do with her hair.

At work, she wore it up, severe and businesslike. At home, she left it loose and long. It was another way to remind herself, Leave the job at the job. Leave home at home.

But compartmentalizing was a temporary coping strategy at best. It failed to account for a backyard potluck barbeque with her co-workers.

***

A message from Nathan Lilly reminds us of yet more good shizzle at SpaceWesterns.com: “A Man Called Mister Brown: Mr. Green (part 3 of 8)” by A.R. Yngve, and “Octopus Tanks” by Max Gladstone. If the latter isn’t the best story title you’ve read all week, I want to know why!

***

A message from Gary Ballard:

I saw that you write up free fiction on Fridays and wondered if you’d like to cover my blog novel. It’s called Under the Amoral Bridge and it’s being updated weekly with a new chapter and/or supplementary material.

Consider it covered, Gary! Least we can do for someone who bought some ad space is let the RSS readers know about it too.

***

Here’s Memory #12 from Jayme Lynn Blaschke:

Thunder boiled up through Flavius’ arm, threatening to tear muscle from bone and split his skin. It roared through his shoulder and into his head.

His head! His head! His head! Lightning flashed behind his eyes, blinding bursts of fire that swelled within his skull as the terrible pressure built up. Were all the killer waves racing ahead of a storm to ram themselves into a teacup, it’d still be a faint whisper of the torrent pouring into him.

***

And now it’s Friday Flash Fiction time! Let’s see what we have …

• Shaun C Green channels Justin Pickard in “Binary Visions“
• Justin Pickard (the real one) pitches one out from the depths of Dissertation Hell – it’s “Sublime“
• Dan Pawley wants to tell you about “Alice“
• Gareth D Jones wants to tell you about “Rosetta“
• Neil Beynon is smoking “Quantum Cigars“
• Sarah Ellender keeps it super-short with “Liquid Smoke“
• Phred Serenissima is engaged in “The Great Debate“

Apologies this week from Gareth L Powell; he’s celebrating having topped the Interzone reader’s poll. Congratulations, Gareth – well deserved.

Added bonus: not exactly flash, and not exactly a story, but long-time web-buddy and all-round smart dude Sterling “Chip” Camden posted a speculative piece of writing entitled “Conversation with a neighbour” which you might find worth reading.

***

What’s that? You want more free fiction? More than I manage to link to here every week?

Well, you’re in luck – I am reliably informed by the SF Signal crew that Free Speculative Fiction Online (the most accurately named website ever) has had a recent update with masses more titles, many of which haven’t been mentioned here. So if you find these weekly round-ups insufficient, that’s where you want to be clicking next.

***

Oh, you want dead-tree reading material as well? Good grief, you’re a demanding lot!

Lucky for you, the Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction is offering you a free copy of the July 2008 issue; all you have to do in exchange is blog about it.

***

And that’s about your lot, folks – until next week, at least! In the meantime, keep those plugs and tip-offs rolling in, and have a great weekend.

Friday means free fiction as always here at Futurismic, and coming up is your weekly selection of genre wonders that won’t cost you anything to read.

But before you dig in, make sure you go and read our latest published piece of fiction, David Reagan’s “Solitude Ripples From The Past“.

OK, on with the list!

***

Some innuendo-laden titles from Manybooks.net:

• “What The Left Hand Was Doing” by Gordon Randall Garrett – (“There is no lie so totally convincing as something the other fellow already knows-for-sure is the truth. And no cover-story so convincing …”)
• “Cum Grano Salis” by Gordon Randall Garrett – (“Just because a man can do something others can’t does not, unfortunately, mean he knows how to do it. One man could eat the native fruit and live … but how?”)
• “Hunters Out Of Space” by Joseph Everidge Kelleam

***

Solaris Books are sharing a complete Stephen Baxter story. Originally published in the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Vol 1, “Last Contact” will show you why Baxter is rated as one of hard sf’s best sensawunda guys:

Caitlin walked into the garden through the little gate from the drive. Maureen was working on the lawn.

Just at that moment Maureen’s phone pinged. She took off her gardening gloves, dug the phone out of the deep pocket of her old quilted coat and looked at the screen. “Another contact,” she called to her daughter.

Caitlin looked cold in her thin jacket; she wrapped her arms around her body. “Another super-civilization discovered, off in space. We live in strange times, Mum.”

***

Gwyneth Jones has pretty much finished sprucing up her online archive. Another story has been added called “In The Forest Of the Queen”

Furthermore there’s also a pair of critical essays which, despite Ms Jones’ self-effacement, are doubtless well worth a read if you like to analyse your literature as well as read it. They are:

• String of Pearls – “Sex and horror, perfect playmates or evil twins? Is this a genuine m/f divide? An examination of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel.”
• Wild Hearts In Uniform – “Secrets of the Pause: What did military sf do, in that brief hiatus when the USA was scratching around for a new external enemy? The answer may surprise you.”

***

Apex Science Fiction and Horror Magazine provides “Light Like Knives Dragged Across the Skin” by Paul Jessup.

***

Jayme Lynn Blaschke delivers installment 11 of Memory:

The strangling darkness vanished in an instant. His claustrophobic prison burst apart and Flavius found himself soaring a thousand feet above the ground.

He screamed against the rushing wind, flinging forward his cramped arms to shield his head. His sword spun away. The ground weaved wildly, see-sawing back and forth with the shockingly close clouds.

***

Freebies via F&SF by Lucius Shepard:

Lucius Shepard is the award-winning author of innumerable classics, many of which have appeared in the pages of F&SF such as “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” and “The Jaguar Hunter” (which you can read online at Infinity Plus). And, of course, he’s currently up for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Locus Award for best novella, for his F&SF story, “Stars Seen Through Stone.”

“Stars …” is a super story, and comes with my recommendation, if that’s worth anything to you.

***

Jason Sanford likes to share:

My short story “Maps of the Bible” has just been published over on Monsters and Critics. Set in Alabama during the early 1960s, the tale is in some ways a ghost story (although it would be more correct to place the story within the Southern Gothic genre of literature). “Maps of the Bible” also functions as a prologue to my short novel Jeremiah, which consists of the story sequence “Cold Pelts,” “One Side, Two Weeks, One Bathroom,” and “Water Hearts.”

***

Thanks to the tireless Cole Kitchen, I have news of Escape Velocity, a hard science fiction magazine whose e-book versions are free-to-download PDFs. Escape Velocity:

“… publishes sci-fi stories from authors around the globe, future and historical science articles, Special Photo Features, and much more.”

Result! Thanks, Cole – added to the Sidebar of Free Fiction Justice.

***

Another couple of additions to the Sidebar:

• Pantechnicon – a multi-genre webzine with both stories and non-fiction
• Serendipity – this UK-based webzine specialises in magic realist fiction

***

Via Nick Mamatas:

It’s nerdy hobby theme month at Clarkesworld!

Cat Valente brings you “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica“.

My pick was “Birdwatcher” by Garth Upshaw.

And the non-fiction feature is “Of Dice and Men: Modern Fantasists and the Influence of Role Playing Games” by Jay Ridler and Justin Howe.

So get to clickin’ and enjoy your afternoon of twitching, giggling, hand-flapping self-stim glee!

Does that last sentence sound a little suspect to anyone else? Thanks, Nick!

***

Subterranean Online has a new Mike Resnick story – the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones once again encounters his nemesis in “Connoisseurs”.

***

Are you ready for episode 6 of Shadow Unit? “Endgames” was penned (or more likely typed) by Emma Bull:

As he walked the hall between Shadow Unit and the more public spaces of the BAU, Stephen Reyes pinched the bridge of his nose and slid his fingers hard down the ridge of each eyebrow, trying to push away his headache. He’d use both hands, but he had the case jacket in his right. The cause of the headache, those documents.

Bureaucracies would kill and eat you like any other monster. Just not quite so literally.

***

Jake Frievald of Flash Fiction Online dropped us a note about this month’s edition:

“It’s that time of the month again – we just went live on Flash Fiction Online with new free stories. The highlight for sci fi fans is Bruce McAllister‘s “Game”. I like the other stuff, too, though. :)”

Cheers, Jake!

***

And speaking of Flash Fiction … is that the march of the Fictioneers I hear?

There are a number of troops on leave – yours truly is focussing on longer stories for a while, Justin Pickard is in dissertation hell, Jay Lake is convalescing (get well soon, Jay!) and Gareth D Jones is excused for having sold a piece of fiction to Nature magazine – but there’s still the steady stomp of boots on the parade-ground asphalt:

• Clive Birnie is reiterating in “The Identity Thief 2.0“
• Don’t worry, Gareth L Powell; it’s not “The End Of The World“
• Greg O’Byrne is looking good in “The Red Dress“
• Neil Beynon is giving you the “Devil Eyes“

Plus we have new recruits. Sarah Ellender and Gaie Sebold will be posting on alternate Fridays over at their PlotMedics site; Gaie goes first with “Folie a Deux“.

***

And that’s about everything from the immense sprawl of the interwebs, as far as free fiction is concerned. Don’t forget to send us your plugs and tip-offs – and have a great weekend!

Greetings, fiction fans – Friday means freebies!

***

Before we get going with the linkage, it’s worth pointing out that Wednesday was the first anniversary of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. What that means in real terms is that there’s bucket-loads of extra free fiction from all manner of writers spattered all over the intarwebs, and it’s all collected in one convenient LiveJournal Community.

I’ve not checked it out yet (I kinda phear t3h LiveJournal, as I imagine it has the power to erode the last few precious hours of free time I have), but I think we can safely assume that’ll be a real rabbit-hole for fiction fans. Please report back if you find anything particularly good in there that deserves a link of its own!

***

OK, so back to the usual suspects. It’s just the one from Manybooks.net this week:

• “Daughters of Doom” by Herbert B. Livingston (“Deep in space lay a weird and threatening world. And it was there that Ben Sessions found the evil daughters . . .” Mwuah-hah-hah-haaaah!)

***

Nathan Lilly dropped me a note to remind us all that part 2 of A R Yngve‘s “A Man Called Mister Brown” is online at SpaceWesterns.com this week, along with some non-fictional stuff about BSG.

***

Another new piece goes up over at Subterranean Online – “Your Collar” by Elizabeth Bear.

***

I have stumbled upon (and added to the sidebar) another online fiction outlet called Lone Star Stories, which I discovered thanks to the effusive praise Jeremiah Tolbert had for “The Wreck of the Grampus” by Jeremy Adam Smith.

***

There’s another teaser/deleted scene piece (which all seem to get filed under the excellent ‘WTF BBQ’ category) over at Shadow Unit:

“Lau was a Valley Girl, dammit. She could figure out how to use a simple gas grill.

And that was half the problem. She could figure out how to use a simple gas grill, and that was not what this was. This looked like the navigation panel on the Starship Enterprise, and not the Sulu-era one with the slider and a couple of nonfunctional push buttons in primary colors, either.”

***

Small Beer Press have evidently developed a taste for this free Creative Commons downloads business. This week they’ve set free Maureen F McHugh‘s short story collection Mothers & Other Monsters:

“… in her luminous, long-awaited début collection, award-winning novelist Maureen F. McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations.”

Sounds good to me! That said, so does a small beer … it is Friday, after all!

***

I got an email from a chap called Michael Roberts, who says:

“Back in January I wrote a little novelette which is probably not too publishable (or so I read; at 8743 words it’s really too long to put in a magazine). So I figured, why not put it online? And so I finally got off my figurative butt and did so. Now if I could only think of a good title …”

For future reference, Michael, there’s plenty of venues for fiction that length – so you’ll know for next time. If you go and read it, be sure to drop Michael a suggestion for his title!

***

Which brings us round to the march of the Friday Flash Fictioneers!

• Martin McGrath just missed the post last week with “King Rook“
• Mind you don’t cut yourself on Jay Lake’s “Shard“.
• Greg O’Byrne has an “Interstellar” fragment.
• Neil Beynon‘s forty-second piece (he’s only ever missed roll-call once, IIRC) is called “Precious“.
• Shaun C Green has reached a “Turning Point“.
• Gareth D Jones gets all nostalgic in “Gone With The Window“.
• And finally yours truly humbly offers you “Magic Eyes“.

***

And that’s about your lot – I reckon the IPSTPD community should provide more than enough material to be going on with. So until next week, keep your eyes and ears peeled for more free fiction on the web, and drop us a line with your tips!

Have a great weekend, too.