Roll up, roll up – all the fun of the science fictional fair can be found in Futurismic‘s Friday Free Fiction roundup! Step right inside, and don’t mind the geeks, ma’am…

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Here’s a couple from ManyBooks:

• “Last Men in London” by Olaf Stapledon
• “My Father, the Cat” by Henry Slesar

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And here’s a bunch from Feedbooks:

• “The Man Who Saw the Future” by Edward Hamilton
• “Resurrection” by Robert Joseph Shea
• “Reluctant Genius” by Henry Slesar
• “Walls of Acid” by Henry Hasse
• “Shepherd of the Planets” by Alan Mattox
• “Strange Alliance” by Bryce Walton
• “The Three Eyes” by Maurice LeBlanc
• “The Great Gray Plague” by Raymond F Jones (some sort of proto-Drexlerian nano-pocalypse, maybe?)
• “Moment of Truth” by Basil Eugene Wells

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News of a free anthology from Mike Brotherton:

The anthology of astronomy stories I’ve been working on for the last year or two, off and on, is finally completed and available: Diamonds in the Sky.

The anthology is free and you can go there now and read the stories, most of which are original but a few of which are reprints from Analog or Asimov’s. Contributors include Hugo and Nebula award winning authors. Each story focuses on one or two key ideas from astronomy and should have some educational value, but are hopefully first and foremost simply entertaining and good quality stories. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation as a public education and outreach effort, and I’d like to reach as many readers as possible so please spread the word!

Via Jeremy Tolbert, who made the anthology website… and who you should seriously consider hiring to make yours, if you’re in need of one. Or maybe even if you’re not.

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Tor.com presents “A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon” by Ken Scholes

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Strange Horizons presents “The First Time We Met” by Maria Deira

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Hub Magazine presents “A Little Mystery” by Len Bains

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COSMOS Magazine presents “Letting Go” by David Walton

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A message from Nancy Jane Moore:

I’ve put “Thirty-One Rules for Fulfilling Your Destiny” – the one piece of flash fiction in my PS Publishing Showcase collection, Conscientious Inconsistencies – up on Book View Cafe this week.

Thanks, Nancy!

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Issue #2 of Arkham Tales is now available for free download!

This issue contains fiction by K.S. Clay, Dev Jarrett, Jason Hardy, Bric Barnes, Bret Tallman, Matt Finucane, Catherine J. Gardner, John Jasper Owens, Diane Payne, and Garrett Calcaterra, and poetry by K.S. Conlon.

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Looks like I missed a few of the recent free chapters of Jason Stoddard‘s Eternal Franchise, so here are parts 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 for you to get stuck into.

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SF Signal play host to the fourth and final of their excerpt chapters from David Moody‘s Hater. See also: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3;

Furthermore, and perhaps in an effort to make things easier for your humble collator, most of SF Signal‘s free fiction listings for the week that aren’t featured here individually can all be found in one convenient post. Result!

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Finally, let’s see what the Friday Flash Fiction gang have been up to this week:

• Gareth L Powell has another excerpt in lieu of Friday Flash; this one is from a story called “The Winding Curve” which he co-wrote with Robert Starr.
• Gareth D Jones has another of his translations, namely “Yn Aavuilley Moal” – “Delayed Reaction” in Manx, no less.
  

And delivering the more regular format, we have the following:

• “Thirteen” by Neil Beynon
• “The Teachings of Fernet Branca” by Sumit Dam
• “The Swamp Witch” by Gaie Sebold

Plus Dan Pawley gets back in the saddle with a double dose: “The Folksinger” and “Lost in the Supermarket“.

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And that’s your lot, once again. Please forgive any typos or errors, as I’m trying to set up a new computer and have hence hurried through this round-up a little more than I should – I’m sure some eagle-eyed commeter will bring my attention to any mistakes! In the meantime, keep us posted with tip-offs and plugs, and have yourselves a great weekend.

Unlucky for some, perhaps… but we’re no fans of superstition here at Futurismic. And how could it be unlucky to receive a big batch of free science fiction stories to read online, exactly?

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Here’s a fistful of shorts from Manybooks:

• “Resurrection” by Robert J Shea
• “Reluctant Genius” by Henry Slesar
• “Walls of Acid” by Henry Hasse (published pre-sixties, so almost certainly not that sort of acid)
• “Shepherd of the Planets” by Alan Mattox
• “Strange Alliance” by Bryce Walton
• “The Next Logical Step” by Ben Bova

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Strange Horizons presents “Obedience” by Brenna Yovanoff

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Pyr are hosting an excerpt from End of the Century by Chris Roberson

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Polu Texni presents “Very Truly Yours” part 3 by Seth Gordon

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Last week I forgot to mention that the new edition of Lone Star Stories also has poetry:

• “Migration” by Sonya Taaffe
• “By their spaceships ye shall know them” by Jo Walton
• “When Her Eyes Open” by Shira Lipkin

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Here’s some recent fictional output from Subterranean Online:

• “Grail-Diving in Shangrilla with the World’s Last Mime” by Ken Scholes
• “Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden” by C S E Cooney

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Hub Magazine presents “The Astronomer of Baghdad” by Matt Keefe

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Tor.com presents “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction” by Jo Walton

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Here’s another freebie from Chris Roberson – “The Funeral Affair”

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The SF Signal gang are playing host to excerpts from David Moody’s Hater. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 appeared in previous weeks, and Chapter 3 is available now.

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SF Signal‘s magical internet colander also caught these little morsels that we’d otherwise have missed:

• The new issue of Abyss & Apex features fiction by Pauline J Alama, Marie Brennan, Fraser Sherman, Richard Foss, Karl Bunker, and Samantha Henderson
• MindFlights presents “A Native Soul” by Anne M Pillsworth
• The latest issue of Byzarium features fiction by Andrew Kaye, Andy Bolt and Elizabeth Hopkinson
• Big Pulp presents “To Know” by Amanda Walczesky, “Regrets Of A Conquistador” by Jonathan S Pembrook and “The Other Job” by Stephanie Scarborough

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There’s no flash from Gareth L Powell this week, but he has an except from his story “Arches”, which is on the long-list of this year’s Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Checking in for your regular Friday flash dosage this week are the following:

• Sumit Dam presents “The Man With the Musical Penis“
• Sarah Ellender takes a stand with “Lonestar on the Bridge“

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And there’s your lot for another week; don’t forget we’re always looking for tip-offs and recommendations, so if you think we’re missing things let us know! In the meantime, have a great weekend.

Wow, it’s the end of January already – where the hell’s this year going to so fast, I ask you?

With another week comes another batch of free science fiction stories on the intertubes, lovingly collected from the RSS quagmire and presented for your edification and enjoyment. Bon appetit!

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Just the one from Manybooks:

• “Light-Years Ahead of his Time” by Joseph Devon

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And just the one from Feedbooks:

• “The Love of Frank Nineteen” by David Carpenter Knight

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

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SpaceWesterns presents “The Reckoning” by John P Wilson

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Via the perpetrators themselves (and pretty much everyone else), here’s an opening sample from “Colliding Branes” by Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker.

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Some microfiction news from the Orbit gang:

Jeff Somers — author of The Electric Chruch, The Digital Plague, and the forthcoming The Eternal Prison — is tweeting a short story, a few lines at a time.

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On the subject of Twitter fiction, here’s another example: MidnightStories tweets a 140 character story every night at midnight, Texas time.

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Via EOS Books:

Harper Perennial is celebrating the short story this year, and each Sunday evening during 2009 will be posting a new story from both established authors and début authors. This year they have already published stories from Tony O’Neill, Simon Van Booy, and Mary Gaitskill. Check it out at www.fiftytwostories.com.

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Strange Horizons presents part two of “The Shangri-La Affair” by Lavie Tidhar

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Here’s Memory #32 by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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In keeping with his manifesto of optimism, Jason Stoddard has decided that a lot of his trunk stories are now obsolete, set as they are in a future that now appears much less likely to actually become real (and let’s all hope he’s right on that point).

As a result, he’s releasing some free fiction to the web; first up on the block is his unpublished novel Eternal Franchise, to be serialised over the coming year, starting with chapter 1.1. The future depicted within may be obsolete, but Jason’s storytelling surely isn’t – so why not follow his RSS feed for a vision of the future that might have been?

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Via Chris Roberson:

BookSpot Central is featuring a preview of the first three chapters of The Dragon’s Nine Sons, if you haven’t read the book and would like to sample it.

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A Continuous Coast update from Kit O’Connell:

The latest fiction from the Creative Commons-licensed Continuous Coast project is available. The first five parts of Reesa Brown’s rescue ride are up as of now.

Those interested in learning more about the extreme sport of Gurge Riding depicted in the stories may also want to read these recent chat transcripts.

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The SF Signal gang, in addition to their traditional linkitude, are hosting some excerpts:

Several weeks back, I read and enjoyed Hater by David Moody, a tense thriller with science fictional leanings.

St Martin’s is allowing us to offer the first four chapters right here on SF Signal. Read Chapter 1 below. The next chapter will appear next week.

Meanwhile, here’s all the other gubbins they caught in their trawler-net of justice:

• Infinite Canvas presents “The Day The Saucers Came” by Neil Gaiman [Editor’s note: I’ve heard him read this aloud, and it’s a super little story. Pure Gaiman all the way.]
• Mindflights presents “Marionettes” by Mike Simon
• The new issue of AntipodeanSF features fiction by Jill Smith, Julie Cohen Wornan, Kirstyn McDermott, Matthew Sanborn Smith, Angie Smibert, Shaun A Saunders, Richard Thorne, Mark Farrugia, Ashley Hibbert, and Felicity Dowker
• M-BRANE SF is a new genre magazine available in PDF format

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Before we start with Friday Flash Fiction, here’s a message from a new contributor, Sumit Dam:

Thought I would let you know that I’m posting weekly Friday Flash too, over at Sumitsays.com. Last Friday’s offering was “The Unbearable Beings of Lightness“, my contribution to the Altered Film Titles challenge.

Thanks, Sumit! And here’s this week’s collection:

• Neil Beynon has “A Short Story About Nothing“
• Sarah Ellender smells “Trouble, a Bruin“
• Sumit Dam takes “Flight“
• Gareth D Jones presents a Gaelic remix of his earlier story “Launch” – “Air Bhog“

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And that’s all we have for you this week, ladies and gents. Don’t forget to keep us posted about any free sf that you hear of; we’ll link it here and give you a shout as well. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Here we go again – it’s your weekly dose of free science fiction to read on the intertubes! Dive on in…

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Just the one from Feedbooks:

• “Vital Ingredient” by Gerald Vance

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SpaceWesterns presents “Semantica” by Fredrick Obermeyer

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Strange Horizons presents “The Shangri-La Affair” by Lavie Tidhar

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Subterranean Press Online presents “Three Fancies from the Infernal Garden” By C S E Cooney

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Here’s an untitled snippet from Paul McAuley

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A couple of stories from Interzone have made their way onto the BSFA Awards shortlist, and so TTA Press have set them free in PDF format so everyone can get a taste:

• Greg Egan‘s “Crystal Nights“
• Paul McAuley‘s “Little Lost Robot“

Escape Velocity celebrates similar nomination by going one further: you can download their first three issues in PDF format for a limited time.

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Here’s a week’s worth of Everyday Weirdness:

• “Colors” by Mari Ness
• “Downtown” by DJ Barber
• “The Man with Inverse Gravity” by Christian M Heidicker
• “Digging Holes” by James Hartley
• “Gary Sump’s Hidden City” by Aaron A Polson
• “Memorywort” by Kurt Newton

Rather than enter all of these manually each week, I’ll just recommend you grab the Everyday Weirdness RSS feed.

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As always, both you and we owe the inclusion of these little morsels to our vigilant buddies over at SF Signal:

• Mindflights presents “Soulsong” by Rabia Gale
• The Scientific Indian presents “Noah’s Ark” by Narendra Desirazu and “Touchstone” by J Ramanand
• Afterburn SF presents “Time Tracker” by G Miki Hayden
• Genrewonk presents “The Historian’s Apprentice” by S Andrew Swann
• Big Pulp presents “Affections Between Space” by James Boone Dryden

Plus another huge batch from the Free Speculative Fiction site. Phew!

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Finally, here are a few bite-sized morsels of Friday Flash Fiction. The theme this week was ‘bad film title puns’…

• “MySpace: 1999” by Shaun C Green
• “The Man in the Iron” by Gareth D Jones
• “Full Meta Jacket” by Neil Beynon
• “From Tusk till Dawn” by Sarah Ellender
• “The Remains of the Clay” by Gaie Sebold

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And that’s it for another week – don’t forget you can let us know about stuff that you or someone you know has published; if it’s free, science fictional and on the internet, we want to know about it!

In the meantime, have a great weekend, ladies and gents.