A fairly weighty haul of free fiction for you this week. Let’s see what we’ve got …

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We’ve got short stories!

ManyBooks.net: "With No Strings Attached" by Gordon Randall Garrett, "No Great Magic" by Fritz Leiber, "Subversive" by Mack Reynolds, "The Servant Problem" by Robert F. Young (1962) and "The Fourth Invasion" by Henry Josephs (1956).

Project Gutenberg: "The Red Room" by H. G. Wells.

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We have webzines!

Via Nick Mamatas, the latest Clarkesworld Magazine:

Check out Acid and Stoned Reindeer by Rebecca Ore!
And if you’d like to get agitated, why not read our latest commentary The Language of Defeat by Jeff Vandermeer.

I just read Rebecca Ore’s story – that’s quite a piece of work. Go see!

Screaming Dreams has a Halloween issue available as a PDF for you to download, too.

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We have book tasters!

Pyr has posted the first 3 chapters of Killswitch by Joel Shepherd.

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We have entire novels!

In the mailbox from Stefan Pernar:

I published my first science fiction (although I would like to call it science future 😉 ) novel a few days ago – you can find it at www.jame5.com.

From the blurb: "Jame5 is a "Sophie’s World" for futurists and singularitarians in which the author takes his readers trough a hard take off technical singularity with all its philosophical consequences. What is good and what is evil? Where are we coming from and where are we going? What are happiness and the meaning of life? What do prophets have in common with dictators? All of these questions and more are being touched in this novel …"

Sounds interesting. If anyone would like to send us a review, please do so!

Also, transrealist genius Rudy Rucker has released the entirety of his latest novel, Postsingular, as a Creative Commons download. It comes heartily recommended by me, if that’s worth anything to you.

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And it wouldn’t be Friday Free Fiction without the Friday Flash Fictioneers.

There are a few absentees this week; I know some of them are NaNoWriMo-ing, and that’s a reasonable excuse. (I wish I had one as good, but my fiction time this week was spent dealing with yesterday’s Futurismic hardware crisis …)

Justin Pickard is NaNoWriMo-ing too, but instead of ducking out, he’s posting excerpts – here’s "Traitor!".

Other contributors this week: Neil Beynon gives us "Rainbow"; Dan Pawley provides "My School Trip", and FFF’s founder Gareth L Powell donates "Sun Scrying".

We’d be more than pleased to invite new Fictioneers into the gang – drop us a line if you have a short piece you’d like us to include. The only rules are – it has to be under a thousand words, and it has to be published on your own site on a Friday!

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In case there’s not enough here to keep you busy (in which case I envy the amount of free time you have), Free Speculative Fiction Online has once again updated their (far more comprehensive) list with many new additions from writers old and new.

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Happy reading, and have a great weekend!

It’s Friday – and Friday means free fiction here at Futurismic. So here’s some stuff to fill up the spare hours of your Halloween weekend …

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The  big-name free fiction sites just keep churning out SF&F:

Project Gutenberg: "Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas" by R.A. Lafferty and "The Creature from Cleveland Depths" by Fritz Leiber.

ManyBooks.net: "The Big Bounce" by Walter Tevis, and "Daddy’s Caliban" by Jay Lake.

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Via SF Signal – Forbes magazine commissioned five writers with the following remit: "It’s the year 2027, and the world is undergoing a global financial crisis. The scene is an American workplace."

Here are the results:

• "Abstract" by Michael Bagnulo
• "Springtide" by Max Barry
• "Other People’s Money" by Cory Doctorow
• "The Position" by Warren Ellis
• "Factory" by Lowell Yaeger

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Chris Roberson‘s free fiction just keeps coming. Here’s something seasonal from his days with the Clockwork Storybook webzine – "Trick or Treat – A Public Service Announcement".

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Orbit Books has posted the first chapter of Devices and Desires by K.J. Parker.

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John C Wright is sharing the first chapter of his forthcoming Null-A Continuum novel.

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Via Warren Ellis: "Deadnauts" by Ted Kosmatka at IDEOMANCER – a webzine that’s new to me.

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Make way for the Friday Flash Fictioneers!

A double-whammy from Martin McGrath as he makes good his promise of playing catch-up – "The Fighter" and "The Unexpectedly Existential Life of Margaret Tome"; Shaun C Green presents "She Dances"; Gareth D Jones celebrates the birth of his daughter with "Precious Cargo"; Gareth L Powell provides an excerpt from an as-yet unpublished story, "Hot Rain"; and Dan Pawley gives us "Doppelgangers".

I’m smacking my metaphorical wrist for it, but I’ve not managed my time well enough to contribute this week. But that’s understandable – as Gareth Jones explains, we Flash Fictioneers are busy taking over the world.

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Have a good weekend!

It’s that time of week again! Here’s your free fiction to keep you busy over the weekend … or at work this afternoon, for those of you in the US! 🙂

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New old stories at ManyBooks.net: "The Stoker and the Stars" by Algis Budrys, "Gravity’s Angel" by Tom Maddox, "Toy Shop" by Harry Harrison, and "One-Shot" by James Blish.

And at Project Gutenberg: "Second Sight" by Alan E. Nourse.

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The unstoppably prolific Chris Roberson has a pretty hefty back-catalogue to draw on for his free fiction offerings: I missed last week’s "So Far From Us In All Ways" due to time restrictions, and this week there’s a chunk from his recently published novel Set The Seas On Fire, "A Fencing Lesson".

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An email from Nancy Jane Moore:

"I’m doing some serious blogging about self defense these days, and I
also happen to have a science fiction story — "Survival Skills" — that
illustrates some of my points."

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We’ve mentioned Strange Horizons more than a few times, but that’s not going to stop me doing it again, as Jason Stoddard (who has had stories published here at Futurismic and in loads of other venues) points out that one of his shorter pieces, the 4000-word "Making Payments", is up on SH right now.

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Friday Flashers in action this week: Gareth L Powell’s sliver of a story, "Fifty-Four Dodge"; Neil Beynon’s "The Anniversary", Shaun C Green’s racy and more than a trifle weird "Slip It In", and my own "I am a camera".

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As always – please get in touch with any announcements you’d like included here next time, be they stories, excerpts or podcasts. We don’t care about the format, as long as it’s free!

There may be late arrivals that I’ve missed this week, as my writing duties elsewhere mean I’ll probably be at an album launch party at a dingy music-venue bar somewhere in London when this post goes live … I know, it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it! 🙂 Any fiction that appeared too late for me to compile will be rolled into next week’s post.

Any which way, it’s a thin week – so remind writer friends and editors of webzines to send me an email about new material, or just do so on their behalf. So, here we go:

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Project Gutenberg adds stories from Stanley G. Weinbaum: "The Ideal", "The Point of View", "Pygmalion’s Spectacles" and "The Worlds of If".

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If you’ve any sense, you’re probably checking back regularly or subscribed via RSS, but for those who aren’t in the know, Subterranean Online has added stories by David Prill and Chris Roberson to its latest ongoing edition.

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Not quite fiction in the traditional sense, but worth a look anyway – Steampunk Magazine‘s Guide to the Apocalypse is available as a free PDF download.

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Paul McAuley has posted the first three chapters of his latest novel, Cowboy Angels, for you to try out.

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An email arrived from Fred Himebaugh:

"I’m writing a series of SF fiction openers as an exercise, and blogging them.  Although the posts are nominally openers, the effect is quite similar to flash fiction, so I think your readers will enjoy them as stand-alone stories.  I’m adding new stories at the rate of two or so per day, and I intend to keep at it for at least a week.

My blog’s topics are science fiction, choral music, choral music in science fiction, and science fiction in choral music.  And zeppelins."

An interesting blend of topics, for certain. Cheers, Fred!

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Martin McGrath makes the only confirmed appearance from the Friday Flash Fictioneers by having posted "Another Funny Thing Happened in Hyperspace" a few days early. But I’m confident that the usual suspects will provide in their usual reliable manner, so go and check for some fictional nuggets from Gareth L Powell, Gareth D Jones, Neil Beynon, and Shaun C Green. If all has gone according to plan, my piece called "Harvest for the Gods" should be available too.

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Have a good weekend!

A pretty decent haul this week:

Gareth L. Powell‘s on a roll as far as getting his work published is concerned. In addition to the stuff that’s made it into real dead-tree venues, here’s some of his work you can read for free:

• Pod Dreams of Tuckertown in October’s Byzarium.
• Plus links to older stories by Gareth at Free Speculative Fiction Online

[Disclosure – Gareth’s a good friend, and fellow (founding) member of the Friday Flash Fictioneers]

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Via Nancy Jane Moore:

Here’s a goody for your free fiction page: Suzette Haden Elgin‘s
novel, The Communipaths, first published as an Ace double back in 1970, is now available free online.

By the way, Elgin is still writing and publishing — she just released (in print) an SF poetry collection “Twenty-One Novel Poems.” She blogs at http://ozarque.livejournal.com/ .

Also, the new issue of Farrago’s Wainscot is out, with stories by Forrest Aguirre, Michael Jasper, Yoon Ha Lee, Timothy S. Miller and Jenn Reese. Plus poetry and other.

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Clarkesworld Magazine provides us with “Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang” by Kristin Mandigma.

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Project Gutenburg has some freebies by Alan E. Nourse: “The Link“, “Meeting of the Board” and “My Friend Bobby“.

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Here’s a new site that I’d not heard of before: Every Day Fiction does what it says on the tin, and delivers you a short story (apparently not always sf) every day. I discovered it after Ken MacLeod noticed he got a name-check in a piece called “Security Question” by Ramon Rozas III.

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Chris Roberson‘s on a roll with his own Friday Freebies – here’s a big old chunk of his novel Paragaea.

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The one and only Charlie Stross isn’t able to give away the entirety of his latest novel, Halting State, under a Creative Commons licence, but he is able to provide us with some of the early chapters – start with the prologue.

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Futurismic’s own Jeremiah Tolbert has a great flash piece up at the Daily Cabal – “My Cell Phone is a Slut”, no less.

And as always, if you’ve a hunger for the bite-sized stuff, the Friday Flash Fictioneers can deliver: the above-mentioned Gareth L. Powell gives us “Driving to the Moon”; Gareth D. Jones has his tongue in his cheek with “The Alliterati”; Martin McGrath has been playing catch-up after a few weeks of silence, and you can see the results; Neil Beynon delivers “A Bit Of A Pickle”; and there’s always “Secrets of the Faith” by yours truly. Looks like some of the gang are running a little late this week, so you may want to keep your eyes peeled for work from Shaun C. Green … and last but not least, welcome to our newest recruit Dan Pawley, whose FFF debut is entitled “Transportation”.

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And one to watch out for in the weeks to come – Fantasy Magazine is moving entirely away from print and changing to a free weekly online format – and increasing their per-word price for accepted fiction in the process!

Enjoy your weekend!

Authors, editors and anyone else – if you’ve got something free to read or listen to that you want included in next week’s round-up, drop an email to me (Paul Raven) via the address embedded in my name on the Staff page. Cheers!