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…

***

There’s a lone novel at Manybooks.net:

• Mind + Body by Aaron Dunlap

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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!

***

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.

***

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

***

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

***

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… 🙂

***

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“.

***

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.

***

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.

***

Another rogue DVD extra just cropped up at Shadow Unit.

***

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

***

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

***

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

***

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…

***

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

***

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’.

***

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

***

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.

***

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.

***

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!

Friday rolls round once again, like some perpetually mobile ball-bearing in the supermarket aisle of life… so best grab onto a stack of free fiction to break your fall, eh? Let’s see what we’ve got…

***

There’s a big batch of pulp-era classix at Feedbooks:

• “The Gallery” by Rog Phillips
• “Advanced Chemistry” by Jack G Huekels
• “Alien Offer” by Al Sevcik
• “Star Mother” by Robert Franklin Young
• “Wanted – 7 Fearless Engineers!” by F Orlin Tremaine
• “The Coming of the Ice” by Green Peyton Wertenbaker
• “A Place in the Sun” by Stephen Marlowe
• “Summer Snow Storm” by Stephen Marlowe

***

AntipodeanSF‘s new issue has ten micro-flash stories waiting to be read.

***

There’s a new issue of Behind the Wainscot, too:

• “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet” by Becca de la Rosa
• “Some Notes on the Eisenberg Estate” by Willow Fagan
• “Birdhouse” by Kristine Ong Muslim
• “Exoskeletal” by Laura Ellen Scott

***

This week’s fictional offering from Strange Horizons: “Just After Midnight” by Christie Skipper Ritchotte.

***

Tor.com are offering a free ebook version of Brian Francis Slattery‘s Spaceman Blues. The only catch is that you have to be a registered member of the site to get at them, but I imagine the bulk of you are already.

***

Here’s a bit of a break from science fiction, if you fancy it, via a tip-off from Futurismic‘s own Tom Marcinko:

Literary agent Lucienne Diver declared “Urban Fantasy Week” and has posted some short stories by some of the series authors in her stable on her Livejournal.

Cheers, Tom!

***

Via Nick Mamatas, the summer issue of Weird Tales is available as a free PDF download, for an unspecified limited period…

***

Peter Watts has a snippet of fiction up at his blog that comes with spoiler warnings, the title of which appears to be “Good News for Modern Man“. Peter Watts being Peter Watts, it probably isn’t good news at all…

***

Via the indispensable SF Signal, there’s an excerpt from Alastair Reynolds‘ The Six Directions of Space at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist.

***

The latest news from Subterranean Online:

The Fall 2008 issue is well under way, with the serialized “Celestial Empire” novelette by Chris Roberson now complete…

***

More leather-slappin’ sharp-shootin’ fiction at SpaceWesterns.com:

• “The Mound (Part VI)” by H P Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop
• “Last Taste of Manna” by T J McIntyre

***

Jayme Lynn Blaschke is still dredging through a sea of Memory – here’s part 27.

***

To close things off, here’s a handful of Friday Flash Fiction:

• Greg O’Byrne is down with “Cats These Days“. You dig it?
• Phred Serenissima has an appointment at “The Surgery“
• Sarah Ellender swears “Till Death Do Us Part“

***

And that’s about your lot, folks… for this week, anyway. Keep those tip-offs coming in; I need ’em before 1800 GMT if they’re to make the cut on Friday! In the meantime, have a great weekend.

Is it just me, or are the weeks speeding up? Seems like only yesterday I compiled the last Friday Free Fiction post, but here I am again with a big batch of free-to-read science fiction from the far reaches of the hyper-clogged intertubes…

***

A couple of oldies at Manybooks.net:

• “The Lanson Screen” by Arthur Leo Zagat
• “Jewels of Gwahlur” by Robert Howard

***

A whole bunch of stuff from Feedbooks:

• “Hard Guy” by Howard Browne
• “Omega, the Man” by Lowell Howard Morrow
• “Islands in the Air” by Lowell Howard Morrow
• “The Sword and the Atopen” by Taylor H Greenfield
• “John Jones’s Dollar” by Harry Stephen Keeler
• “The Rat Racket” by David Henry Keller
• “The Jameson Satellite” by Neil Ronald Jones
• “Zehru of Xollar” by Hal K Wells
• The Faith of Men – a collection of Jack London‘s stories
• The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories by John Kessel
• Magic for Beginners, the much-praised collection by by Kelly Link

***

Via Karl Schroeder:

You can try out Metatropolis, the shared world anthology from Audible.com, before buying. There’s a sample from my own story, “To Hie from Far Cilenia”, or if you want you can listen to Jay Lake’s excellent story, “In the Forests of the Night” in its entirety.

***

Paul McAuley seems intent on sharing pretty much the whole of his new novel The Quiet War; here’s chapter 8 and chapter 9.

***

Via pretty much everywhere, it seems that although you can’t read it, you can hear the entirety of Neil Gaiman‘s new YA novel The Graveyard Book… as read by Gaiman himself on his just-finished tour of bookstores and lovingly video’d by his people.

The videos are embedded in different posts on his blog, but this category collects them all together. I know it’s not sf, but it deserves inclusion because it’s good to see that even as big a name as Gaiman can see the merits in giving free access to his work.

Plus he’s a very nice chap, don’t you know. 🙂

***

Scotland-based Finnish author Hannu Rajaniemi just sold a trilogy to Gollancz, but the first book isn’t even finished yet, so there’ll be a while to wait until you can read it.

Some of you may have read his story in the latest Interzone… the rest of you can make do with the free stories stashed on Rajaniemi’s website:

• “Shibuya no Love“
• “Gingerbread“
• “Naarssuk’s Daughter“
• “Kosmograd Blues“

***

This week at Strange Horizons: “The Lion and the Mouse” by Kaolin Imago Fire

***

Ray Gun Revival has a new issue available to download (comes as a PDF, y’see).

***

Two new pieces at SpaceWesterns:

• “Kin” by Bruce McAllister
• “The Mound: Part 5” by H.P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop

They’ve just upped their rates for fiction, by the way, so sf writers with a Clint Eastwood jones should get over there and submit something.

***

A message from Ben Rawluk:

A couple weird/SF postcard stories available on my blog: #1 and #2.

As well, the first issue of Future Earth is available for free as a pdf, with lots of fiction and poetry inside.

Thanks, Ben!

***

Jayme Lynn Blaschke has found the twenty-sixth fragment of his Memory.

***

Finally, some Friday Flashing from a few of the usual suspects:

• Gareth D Jones is “Dog’s Best Friend“
• Gaie Sebold has been meditating at “The Temple“
• Gareth L Powell needs to rescue “The Cloud Princess“
• Neil Beynon spreads his “Wings“

***

And here’s a novelty non-fiction bonus via BoingBoing whose title explains itself:

The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush by Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Perhaps that should be filed under fantasy? 😉

***

That’s all for this week, boys and girls. Keep those tip-offs coming in – deadline is 1800 GMT every Friday. Have a great weekend!