Here it is folks – two week’s worth of free science fiction from around the web. I hope you’re hungry!

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At ManyBooks.net:

• The Day of the Nefilim by David L. Major
• The Crack of Doom by Robert Cromie

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Over at FeedBooks, the Futurismic back-catalogue is nearly complete:

• David Reagan – “Only the Neck Down“, “Solitude Ripples From The Past“
• Ruth Nestvold – “Exit Without Saving“
• Will McIntosh – “Echoes in Evening Wear“
• David McGillveray – “Forgotten Dragons“
• Jason Stoddard – “Jack’s Gift“
• Chris Nakashima-Brown – “R.P.M.“
• Mark Ward – “A Life In Pictures“
• David Walton – “The Towers of St. Michael’s“
• Eliot Fintushel – “UXO, Bomb Dog“
• Leonard Richardson – “Mallory“
• Kristin Janz – “Veritas Nos Liberabit“

And a few old classics from elsewhere:

• Ernest M Kenyon – “Security“
• Edgar Pangborn – “The Good Neighbors“
• Frederic Brown – “Earthmen Bearing Gifts“
• Ambrose Bierce – “The Damned Thing“
• Jeffrey A Carver – Neptune Crossing, Strange Attractors, “Rocket Ride! A Short Day’s Journey Into Space“
• Benjamin Rosenbaum – The Ant King and Other Stories
• Kelly Link – Stranger Things Happen
• Charles V de Vet – “Monkey on his Back“

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The last ever Oddlands Magazine:

Short Fiction

• “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” by Edward Morris
  
• “The World Above” by Adam Durrant
• “Yet Again at the Funeral of Robin Goodfellow” by Derek Goodman

Poetry

• “Music Smooth as Fog” by Marge Simon
• “Sparrow” by Marge Simon
• “In the Eyes of the Pilot” by Bruce Boston

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Clarkesworld Magazine:

• Eric M Witchey – “Can You See Me Now?“
• Cat Rambo – “Worm Within“

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Byzarium:

• “The Mistman” by Michael John Grist
• “An Occurrence at Oakpost Sundries” by Jacob P. Silvia

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Subterranean Press has another installment of “Kilimanjaro” by Mike Resnick. And another little bonus at Subterranean – Scalzi fans who don’t read the Whatever (for, ahem, whatever reason) should schlepp on over and check out “Denise Jones, Super Booker“.

(Those who do read the Whatever doubtless knew that already… and knew that Scalzi sold it within thirteen (13!) minutes of finishing it.)

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Apex Online:

A Jay Lake story, originally published in Interzone – “The American Dead”

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John Klima – who blogs for Tor and edits the rather super print zine Electric Velocipede – has had a story published. I’ll let him explain:

A select few of you know that I do write, despite my protestations that I am just an editor. And even fewer of you know that I sold a story to Diet Soap, the wonderfully eclectic magazine put out by Doug Lain.

My story, which was initially submitted under a pseudonym, was accepted for the online edition of Diet Soap. Doug has created a new feature, “How to Write Stories About Writers” of which I am the first offering.

There are two parts:

• My Story
• A Short Interview

I hope you enjoy them both.

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A heads-up from Paul McAuley:

I’ve just discovered that the online magazine Fanzine has published a short story by Scott Bradfield. I’ve been a big fan every since I read some of his early short stories in Interzone, back in the Paleolithic: smartly-written absurdist parables, goofy and sweet, but always with a sting in the tale. Kind of like the films of Preston Sturges.

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Those nice people at Orbit Books have got another excerpt from their roster for you to read; this time it’s from Halting State, the latest sf novel from Charlie Stross.

For what it’s worth, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I reckon you’ll get a good sense of whether it’ll be your thing by checking out a sample of its idiosyncracies… put it this way, if you’re into RPGs, virtual worlds or old-school text-adventure dungeon games, I reckon you’ll love it.

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Two slices of Jayme Lynn Blaschke‘s Memory, numbers 22 and 23

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Here are some free samples from John Joseph Adams‘ new zombie fiction anthology, The Living Dead (how does he manage such a prodigious output?):

• “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” by Kelly Link
• “Death and Suffrage” by Dale Bailey
• “Dead Like Me” by Adam-Troy Castro
• “Stockholm Syndrome” by David Tallerman

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The mysterious Minister Faust, who has been blogging over at Jeff VanderMeer’s Ecstatic Days this week, offers an excerpt from his book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad.

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An email from Shira Lipkin:

Hello! I’m doing a collaboration with Kythryne Aisling of Wyrding Studios, posting short fiction every weekday this month based on reader prompts and Kythryne’s jewelry. The fiction is free; there’s a PayPal button, but no payment is required, so Free Ficton Friday fans might be interested. 🙂

Thanks, Shira – good luck!

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Tor.com has another piece of fresh fiction from a genre notable: “The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder” by Elizabeth Bear.

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Thanks to SF Signal for rounding up a lot of stuff that I’d have doubtless otherwise missed by being away from the RSS coalface:

• “Larisa Miusov” by Lucius Shepard, parts one, two, and three.
• An excerpt from The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines
• Revolution SF has “Wonder” by J.R. and “Flowers for Melody” by Mikal Trimm
• SpaceWesterns: “West of the Texas Nebula” by Dan Devine and Lyn Perry.
• Reflection’s Edge #39 features fiction from Matthew Kressel, Claude Lalumière, Margaret Yang, Chad Bank, and Brian Haycock.
• Ray Gun Revival #46 has a gorgeous looking new issue featuring fiction by Jonathon Mast, Justin R. Macumber, T.M. Hunter, Jonathan J. Schlosser, and Alice M. Roelke. The issue also features continuing serials by M. Keaton, Keanan Brand, L. S. King, Johne Cook, and Sean T. M. Stiennon, as well as art by Christian Hecker and reviews.
• SFX has “The Stinker” by Colin Harvey.
• And finally, Munseys has “The Judas Valley” by Gerald Vance (1956).

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And a special mention – Futurismic‘s very own hard-working fiction editor Chris East got a story published at COSMOS Magazine – “Frame of Mind“. Yay, Chris! 😀

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Last week’s Friday Flash pieces:

• Sarah Ellender – “Red Rock West“
• Gaie Sebold – “Tempus Fugit“
• Shaun C Green – “We’re Never Going Home!“
• Neil Beynon – “Turn“
• Phred Serenissima – “Vandiver“
• Gareth L Powell – “Hot Rats” (Zappa references FTW!)
• Clive Birnie – “Regret“

And here are the early ones from this week; I’m afraid another sojourn away from the computer this evening may mean I miss a few, but I’ll roll ’em on into next week’s round-up if so.

• Shaun C Green – “Watching the Valves“
• Sarah Ellender – “The Seven Year Itch“
• Phred Serenissima – “The Cube“

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Non-fiction bonus: Sir Cory of Doctorow has a collection of his essays coming out, and naturally you can get an electronic version for nada:

Tachyon Books and I are launching my latest book, Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, my very first collection of essays. In it are 28 essays about everything from copyright and DRM to the layout of phone-keypads, the fallacy of the semantic web, the nature of futurism, the necessity of privacy in a digital world, the reason to love Wikipedia, the miracle of fanfic, and many other subjects.

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Phew! Amazing how it all piles up in just a couple of weeks, eh? Keep your tip-offs coming in, though, and they’ll make it into next week’s selection – deadline 1800 GMT!

Happy Friday, free fiction fans! This week’s selection may be missing a few items, because I’ve had to precompile it on Thursday (I’m off on holiday, don’t you know). For the same reason, there won’t be a Friday Free Fiction next week, but I’ll be saving up the links as per usual for a bumper edition on 12th September.

If you’re worried about going hungry for new material, though, bear in mind that there’ll be a fresh new Futurismic story out on Monday 1st… keep watching the skies! Now, on with the list…

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From ManyBooks.net, a classic pulp “Hitler won” novel: The Sound Of His Horn by Sarban

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Feedbooks.com are still catching up on the Futurismic back catalogue:

• “The Jiminy Device” by Lisa Mantchev
• “Cycle Thieves” by Mark Ward
• “The Other Side Of Silence” by Ruth Nestvold
• “Diamond Dust” by David Walton
• “Changing the Tune” by Jason Stoddard
• “Real City” by Carrie Vaughn
• “Eyelid Movies” by Will McIntosh
• “The Baby Window” by Vincent VanAllen

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Project Gutenberg drags out Anthem by the enduringly controversial Ayn Rand.

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At Tor.com, a new story from Steven Gould: “Shade”

Xareed had been waiting for the water truck for two days, seated in the dirt at the edge of the camp, his family’s plastic ten-liter water-jug tied to his ankle.

He didn’t like being on the edge of the camp. Except for the piece of cardboard he carried impaled on a stick there was no shade. The poet Sayyid had said, “God’s Blessing are more numerous than those growing trees,” and Xareed hoped so, for there were no trees in the camp or outside. So the blessings had better be more numerous, not less.

Also via Tor, we hear that Mur Lafferty has released an electronic version of her new novel Playing For Keeps in parallel with the dead-tree launch.

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More heads-up notices from the SF Signal posse:

• Stuart Clark is giving away PDF versions of his stories “Digitall” and “The Curator“.
• Someone has laboriously scanned the first year’s worth of Astounding Stories magazine (from 1930!) and put it up on archive.org for all to read. Should be good for a chuckle, if nothing else.

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From Apex Online: “Scenting the Dark” by Mary Robinette Kowal

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Via the Scalzi, an excised chapter from an early version of The Last Colony goes up at Subterranean Online: “The Secret History of the Last Colony“.

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The Shadow Unit never sleeps: the latest DVD extra is called “Mirror Writing“.

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From Gary Reynolds:

Issue #2 of the Concept Sci-fi ezine is now available to download in both PDF format and Mobipocket format. This issue includes short fiction from; Walter Jon Williams, Susan Murray, Ben O’ Neill, Andrew Males and Michael Kechula. We also have a piece of poetry (our first one!) and an interview with Marianne De Pierres.

I really hope that you enjoy reading it – feel free to subscribe and get future issues delivered directly to your Inbox.

You heard the man – go check it out.

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke is up to instalment #22 of Memory:

“Lassie, I’m nae a performing dog what’ll sit up and do tricks on command for ya,” Flavius growled. “Nae matter what ya ken of me, with all this talk about ‘lesser sentients’ and the like, I’m more than a plaything for the women of the Eternal Dominion. I’m descended of Bellona’s bridgroom and Sajal be damned, I’ll nae jump to when ya snap yer fingers. I’ll thank ya to remember that!”

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And finally, Greg O’Byrne missed the Friday Flash Fiction boat last week, so here’s his micro-flash of “Hard Luck on Mars“. I’m sure the other Fictioneers will supply their own links in the comments in my absence!

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And that’s your lot, folks. Keep the tips and plugs coming in as usual, and I’ll cobble them into a post in a fortnight’s time. Until then, bon voyage!