The days are getting longer and brighter; it’ll be summer before we know what’s hit us. But at least the weekly rituals of life are there to keep us in some cyclic tradition of normalcy – rituals like rounding up big batches of free science fiction stories every Friday!

And as it’s a new month, there’s lots of new stuff from our fellow webzines, so get clicking…

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A triptych at Manybooks:

• “The Crystal Crypt” by Philip K Dick
• “The God in the Box” by Sewell Peaslee Wright
• A Winter Amid the Ice and Other Thrilling Stories by Jules Verne

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And a bunch from Feedbooks:

• “Inside John Barth” by William W Stuart
• “Beyond the Door” by Philip K Dick
• “Year of the Big Thaw” by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• “Texas Week” by Albert Hernhuter
• “Lost in the Future” by John Victor Peterson
• “Solar Stiff” by Chas A Stopher

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New for May at Clarkesworld:

• “From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog9” by Nnedi Okorafor
• “The Devonshire Arms” by Alex Dally MacFarlane

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New stuff from Apex Online:

• “Hideki and the Gnomes” by Mark Lee Pearson
• “Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens” by Peter M Ball
• “When the Thorns are the Tips of Trees” by Jason Sanford
• “Gone Fishin’” by John R Platt

And as an added bonus, Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup is being made available as a free PDF download for the remainder of May.

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Subterranean Online presents:

• “Conquistador de la Noche” by Carrie Vaughn
• “Crimes and Glory” by Paul McAuley
• “Under the Honey” by Liz Williams

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Here’s episode 2.03 of Shadow Unit: “Sin Eater”

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Jason Stoddard presents chapter 6.2 of Eternal Franchise

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Tor.com presents “Last Son of Tomorrow” by Greg Van Eekhout

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Strange Horizons presents “The Rising Waters” by Benjamin Crowell

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COSMOS Magazine presents “Delivering Tomorrow, Today” by Robert Friedman

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HUB Magazine #85 includes “Old Clothes” by Chris Cyr

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A message from Chris Odhner:

My brother is publishing a new free short story *every day* for the next year.

Thanks, Chris!

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A message from from Jake Freivald:

The latest edition of Flash Fiction Online is up. Two of our three new flashes are SF: “Jack Rabbit” by Isaac Espriu and “Billions of Stars” by KJ Kabza.

Cheers, Jake!

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And thanks as always to SF Signal, without whose ubiquitous free-fictional panopticon we would have missed the following:

• There’s a bunch of new additions to the Suvudu free library:
  • Kiss of Midnight by Lara Adrian
  • Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham
  • Elric: The Stealer of Souls by Michael Moorcock
• Fusion Fragment presents “For the Love of Ceelie” by Matthew Sanborn Smith
• The New Yorker presents “The Slows” by Gail Hareven
• The New Yorker has also published the JG Ballard story “The Autobiography of J.G.B.“
• The Nautilus Engine‘s May 2009 issue includes fiction from Fabio Fernandes, LL Wise, Daniel Stiles, KM Rockwood, Violet Hilton, Jason L Corner, JD Riso, Mimi Vaquer, and Heath Lowrance
• Episode #22 of Contagious by Scott Sigler is available for download in PDF and MP3 formats.
• The latest issue of Aphelion includes fiction by T Richard Williams, Jon Wesick, Joel Realubit, Roderick D Turner, Terry Larson, E S Strout, Ed Barol, Joseph T Christopher, Mary Kiorden Hayden, Tyler Hardin, Philip Roberts, Ken Kraus, and Dan Edelman

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And finally Sumit Dam steps in with some Friday Flash: “The Reunion”

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And that’s your lot! Don’t forget to drop us a line about anything you think warrants inclusion in a future Friday Free Fiction; in the meantime, have a great weekend!

Happy May Day! Even if your religious or political leanings don’t care for the date, it’s not only a Friday but the first weekday of the month – which means we’ve just published our regular fictional offering, and you should go read Stephen Gaskell’s “Under an Arctic Sky” right away.

And when you’re all done with that, you can get started on this little list of free science fiction on the web as a way of filling up your weekend…

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Here’s a bunch from ManyBooks:

• “Only the Neck Down” by David Reagan (a Futurismic classic!)
• “Inside John Barth” by William W Stuart
• Astounding Stories of Super-Science – February 1930 pulp magazine in full!
• “Solar Stiff” by Chas A Stopher
• “Lost in the Future” by John Victor Peterson
• “Texas Week” by Albert Hernhuter
• “Beyond the Door” by Philip K Dick
• “Year of the Big Thaw” by Marion Zimmer Bradley

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And a couple from FeedBooks:

• “The Calm Man” by Frank Belknap Long
• “Devil Crystals of Arret” by Hal K Wells

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HUB Magazine #84 features “My Dad’s Idea” by Llinos Cathryn

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I’ve lost track of what I’ve linked to at Shadow Unit and what I haven’t, as the DVD Extras don’t come with numbers to sort the order out. So here’s the latest two pieces, just in case: “Dragons” and “Disintegration“.

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Jason Stoddard delivers chapter 6.1 of Eternal Franchise

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Tor.com presents “TVA Baby” by Terry Bisson

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Via Ken MacLeod:

My colleague and fellow Genomics Forum Writer in Residence Pippa Goldschmidt‘s short story “The Competition for Immortality” is now online at LabLit.

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From good friend o’ the site Nancy Jane Moore:

I ripped my free Book View Cafe flash fiction for this week straight from the headlines: “How to Deal With the Coming Crisis” is about swine flu. By the way, I post a free flash fiction every Thursday on Book View Cafe, and we generally have new free fiction on the site every day.

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Via BoingBoing and loads of other places:

“[To make Thoughtcrime Experiments,] Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson selected nine mind-squibbling SF and fantasy stories from the slush pile, commissioned five works of art, paid the authors and artists, and packaged the whole thing as a high-quality anthology that you’re free to copy and remix. Artists include E-Sheep’s Patrick Farley and fanfic darling Erin Ptah; authors include Mary Anne Mohanraj, Carole Lanham, and Ken Liu. We also wrote an essay describing the process, which you can read if you’re interested in how we did it or what the SF/fantasy market looks like from the editor’s perspective.”

Looks like you can get Thoughtcrime Experiments in multiple formats from ManyBooks already, too.

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The SF Signal team obviously sensed how busy I’ve been this week, and did a couple of round-up posts of free fiction links in additio to scraping up the following little tidbits from the far crevices of the intertubes:

• Aberrant Dreams presents “Children of the Fire” by Melissa Mead, “Dione” by Jess Kaan, and “Gilding the Dandelion” by Futurismic veteran Marissa K Lingen
• Chapters 1 and 2 of The Time Idiot by A R Yngve can be found on his website
• The latest issue of Abyss & Apex includes fiction by Lisa A Koosis, Bud Sparhawk, Aliette de Bodard, Ruth Nestvold, and William Highsmith
• The latest issue of Ideomancer presents fiction by J(ae)D Brames, Michaela Kahn, Steven Mohan, Jr., J C Runolfson, Mike Allen, and Amal El-Mohtar
• Issue #5 of Concept Sci-Fi has appeared, including fiction by Dylan Fox, Lawrence Buentello, and Jonathan Lowe

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And to cap it off, there’s one bit of Friday Flash Fiction this week, courtesy of “R-zero” by Sumit Dam.

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And we’re done – so get out of here and enjoy your weekend! But don’t forget to let us know about cool stuff we should be mentioning here, OK?

It’s Friday evening here in the UK, which can only mean one thing – a big batch of free science fiction to read on the intertubes, of course! So, without further delay…

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Just the one at ManyBooks:

• “The Calm Man” by Frank Belknap Long

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And an old-school novel at FeedBooks:

• The Great White Queen by William Le Queux

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Because he’s too modest to just step up and tell you himself, Futurismic blogger Edward Willett asked me to mention:

I’ve posted the first two chapters of my upcoming novel Terra Insegura (sequel to the Aurora Award-nominated Marseguro) to my new-and-improved website. Bonus: I’ve also posted MP3s of myself reading said chapters. Terra Insegura is published by DAW Books and will be in bookstores May 5.

Go take a look!

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Season 2 of Shadow Unit continues with “Dragons”

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Jason Stoddard presents chapter 5.2 of Eternal Franchise

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Via pretty much everywhere:

Neil Gaiman, Lou Anders, Bryan Talbot, Hal Duncan, Catherynne M Valente, Chris Roberson, Paul S Kemp and Rhys Hughes contributed fiction and articles that are part of issue 5 of Heliotrope, an appreciation to the legendary writer, Michael Moorcock.

Go get your Elric on.

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Subterranean Online presents “The Ascendant” by Ted Kosmatka

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Strange Horizons presents “As He Was” by Kit St. Germain

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Tor.com presents “Bugs in the Arroyo” by Stephen Gould

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Here’s the stuff that the ubiquitous metaphorical feelers of SF Signal  probed out from the week:

• Raygun Revival issue #52 features fiction by Andy Heizeler, L S King, Justin R Macumber, Keanan Brand, Jodi MacArthur, Martin Turton, Darrell B Nelson, and M Keaton
• PulpGen presents “The Chalice of Circe” by Willard Hawkins

Big Pulp presents:

• “Holding Fire” by Georgey Fluharty
• “Kenna’s Song” by Betsy Dornbusch
• “Long Way From Home” by Alice Folkart

And finally, some more free excerpts:

• Dead if I Do by Tate Hallaway
• World’s End by Mark Chadbourn
• The Discovery of Socket Greeny by Tony Bertauski

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Here’s two weeks worth of  Friday Flash Fictionto make up for me sloping off early last week:

• “Courtship Considered As Twelve Variations On The Game Of Chess” by Sumit Dam
• “Funeral” by Shaun C Green
• “GOOGLED24C36E6D230D48D” by Neil Beynon
• An excerpt from Gareth L Powell‘s forthcoming story “Fallout“
• “Huddle Formation” by Sumit Dam
• “Move On” by Neil Beynon
• “Lucy’s Toy” by Sarah Ellender

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And finally, a bonus for those of stern disposition (or a cephalopod festish) –The Complete Works of H P Lovecraft, available to read for free on the web. [via Matt Staggs]

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There you have it, folks. As always, get in touch if you have anything to plug, promote or recommend; our trained operators are waiting for your call – er, email. Have a great weekend!

Another week flies by – is it just me or are they getting faster? Haven’t I said that before? What if I’m caught in some sort of temporal loop in a simulated universe? What if none of you are actually real?

Ah, who cares – it’s Friday, and there’s free science fiction stories to read on the internet. Get stuck in!

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Here’s a couple at ManyBooks:

• “Song in a Minor Key” by Catherine Lucile Moore
• “The Right People” by Adam Rakunas (Futurismic reprint!)

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And a bona fide classic from one of the genre’s best known names at FeedBooks:

• “Beyond Lies the Wub” by Philip K Dick

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HUB Magazine presents “The Not Knowing” by Conrad Williams

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Subterranean Online presents “Under the Honey” by Liz Williams

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Strange Horizons presents “The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon, a classic from 1959

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Jason Stoddard presents chapter 5.1 of Eternal Franchise

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Jeremiah Tolbert presents “The Kansas Jayhawk vs. The Midwest Monster Squad“; this awesome geek-gonzo (geekzo? gonzeek?) story was published in Interzone a few years back, and comes with my sincerest recommendation as a fun read.

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Shadow Unit has posted another DVD Extra:  “Disintegration”

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Via Tor.com (and others – saw it there first), Lone Star Stories are giving away a free PDF version of their recent anthology, the Lone Star Stories Reader.

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Via Cory at BoingBoing comes an opportunity to read a story originally written for him and his wife as a honeymoon gift: “(Nothing But) Flowers” by John McDaid

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Also via BoingBoing (and many many others), Steampunk Magazine returns after a long hiatus with the free-to-download 5th issue of the subgenre-defining zine.

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Just sneaking into my inbox before I leave the house comes a message from Lee Giminez:

I wanted to let you know that my science fiction short story, “September 12“, was just published in The Cynic Magazine.

Cheers, Lee!

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Unusually, we seem to have caught almost all the same things as SF Signal this week, though they do have a beefy round-up post from earlier today that might be worth looking through. And don’t forget they’ve collected links to all the free-to-read Hugo Award nominee stories as well.

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As my schedule in the world beyond the internet demands I be elsewhere this afternoon, I only have one piece of Friday Flash to report at the time of compiling this post, namely “Patterns” by Gaie Sebold. All later arrivals will be collected up in next week’s post, as always.

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And there’ you have it; don’t forget to send us your tip-offs, plugs and links about good sf stuff to read on the web. In the meantime, I’m off to London to meet none other than Tim Powers – have a good weekend!