It’s Easter weekend! Even if the religious significance does nothing for you, the potential for a long weekend off is something to shout about. Because time off means time for reading stories…. and if you’ve not got anything specific in your reading queue, we’ve got your back right here with this week’s Friday Free Fiction round-up. Let’s go!

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A couple from ManyBooks:

• “Rex Ex Machina” by Frederic Max
• Beautiful Red by M Darusha Wehm

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And a few from FeedBooks:

• “The Weakling” by Everett B Cole
• “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates
• A Journey to the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne

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Paolo Bacigalupi and Night Shade Books have made three of Paolo’s stories from his collection Pump Six – “The Calorie Man”, “Pop Squad” and “Yellow Card Man” – available as a free pdf for a reading group called Think Galactic. Bacigalupi’s one of the writers I fully expect to get very big very fast; go read these tales and find out why.

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Shadow Unit‘s latest episode is called “Sugar”

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HUB Magazine presents “Under a Bridge” by Paul Fairburn

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Apex Online has its monthly trio of fresh stories up:

• “Love, Dad” by Jeffrey D Kooistra
• “The Last Science Fiction Writer” by Jamie Todd Rubin
• “Waiting for Jakie” by Barbara Krasnoff

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COSMOS Magazine presents “Fuel” by Matthew S Rotundo

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Subterranean Online starts off its spring edition with “A Tulip for Lucretius” by Ken MacLeod

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Strange Horizons presents “Husbandry” by Eugene Fischer

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Three new pieces at Lone Star Stories:

• “People, Unnoticed” by Patricia Russo
• “Off the Path” by Nicole Kornher-Stace
• “Gone Daddy Gone” by Josh Rountree

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As always, SF Signal has round-ups of its own, and a few scattered miscellania:

• H P Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror #5 is available as a free PDF download
• The latest issue of AntipodeanSF contains fiction by S A Harris, Steve Duffy, Alan Baxter, Jamie Richter, Shaun A Saunders, Mark Farrugia, Felicity Dowker, Alan Richard, David Such, and Brendan D Carson
• Aphelion presents fiction by Patrick Welch, Jeani Rector, Coffee Anderson, Jaimie L Elliott, Richard Tornello, Gary W Feather, E W Bonadio, Lee Gimenez, Tony Coles, Matt Spencer, Dale Carothers, McCamy Taylor and Larissa March

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Most of the Friday Flash Fictioneers are at EasterCon right now (and I wish I was there also); that means just a few offerings of microfiction for this week:

• “The Unadventures of Mary Sue Flowershine” by Sarah Ellender
• “Buck” by Neil Beynon
• “The Lost Puddings of London” by Sumit Dam

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And that’s pretty much it! Don’t forget to get in touch with recommendations and tip-offs (fictional or non-fictional; in the meantime, enjoy your weekend!

I knew it was too good to last; a solid week of sunny weather, and now it seems we’re back to grey skies and low temperatures. But hey, the sun always shines on the internet (provided you’re searching the right tags on Flickr), and there’s always free science fiction stories at Futurismic on a Friday afternoon…

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Via Jonathan Strahan, we discover that Night Shade Books have made Ted Chiang’s Hugo-nominated short story “Exhalation” available for free in a variety of formats: PDF, HTML, RTF and Mobipocket

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Mary Robinette Kowal is a Hugo nominee, too; go check out her “Evil Robot Monkey”

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Lou Anders of Pyr reveals that the short story “A Book of Silences” by James Enge is now gracing their free samples page; looks to be more in the fantasy line than we’re usually interested in here at Futurismic, but hey, nothing says you can’t read other stuff too, right?

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We’re up to chapter 4.1 with Jason Stoddard‘s Eternal Franchise

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A message from Lee Gimenez:

My science fiction story “The Wellness Center” was just published in the March edition of Aphelion Magazine.

Congratulations, Lee, and thanks for the tip-off!

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As we’ve thrown some fantasy into the mix, why not a soupcon of horror, too? Tim Lebbon announces an excerpt from his new novel Bar None:

It’s a novel of  ‘chilling suspense, apocalyptic beauty, and fine ales’.   So as a pre-weekend treat, the first ever extract is now available at Dread Central for your perusal and delectation. It reads with a soft fruity aromas, a smooth mouthfeel, and finishes with a dark and complex aftertaste.

Knowing Lebbon, he was probably half-cut when he wrote it, too…

[ Disclosure – Tim Lebbon is one of my clients, and is not really a heavy drinker. Or so he claims. ]

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The DVD Extras are coming thick and fast for Season 2 of Shadow Unit; this one’s called “Ice”

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Strange Horizons presents “The Spider in You” by Sean E Markey

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HUB Magazine presents “Hush a Bye” by Beverley Allen

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Mary Robinette Kowal pops up again, this time at BoingBoing in her capacity as editor of Shimmer Magazine:

“For Shimmer magazine’s 10th issue, we’ve got twelve fantastic new stories and an interview with none other than Cory Doctorow. In honor of Cory’s work with Creative Commons, we are giving away the pdf of issue ten as a free download.”

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke‘s Memory rolls onwards with its thirty-fifth chapter.

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The SF Signal crew have been gathering free fiction links like gangbusters this week, so it appears. There are two massive roundup posts as well as the following tidbits:

• “Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick has been added to the list of 2009 Hugo Award Finalists.
• An excerpt from Dan Abnett‘s Primeval: Extinction Event, based on the BBC series Primeval.
• The Cordwainer Smith Blog rounds up free Cordwainer Smith stories
• “Petrified” by Scott Edelman
• Charles Coleman Finlay‘s free online fiction as listed by the author himself.

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And finally, a fistful of Friday Flash Fiction:

• “Out of Mind” by Gaie Sebold
• “Ball & Chain” by Sarah Ellender
• “Mavis Beacon Teaches typing” by Sumit Dam
• “Still Rising” by Neil Beynon

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That should keep your eyeballs busy for a few hours… don’t forget to keep us informed if theres anything you think deserves a plug here at friday Free Fiction, and have a great weekend!

Five days of clear blue skies and fresh breezes have led me to suspect I’ve been displaced into a parallel dimension or simulated universe by some capricious deity or artificial intelligence… but hey, even a False Spring is better than no Spring at all, as far as I’m concerned.

And whatever reality I happen to be perceiving right now, it doesn’t seem to have any shortage of free fiction floating around in it…

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A lone classic novel at ManyBooks: Deathworld by Harry Harrison

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COSMOS Magazine presents “The Broken Hourglass” by Andy Heizler

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HUB Magazine presents “SBIR Proposal“ by Richard K Lyon

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Strange Horizons presents “Nira and I” by Shweta Narayan

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Tor.com presents “We Haven’t Got There Yet” by Harry Turtledove

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Jason Stoddard delivers chapter 3.1 of Eternal Franchise

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke is up to the 34th installment of Memory

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Chris Howard is giving away his novel Seaborn in digital form

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Jeffrey A Carver is giving away copies of his novel Sunborn in multiple DRM-free formats

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Subterranean Online presents “The Dry Spell” by James P Blaylock

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Weird Tales presents “All In” by Peter Atwood

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And as always our thanks to the tireless crew of the USS SF Signal, who boldly go further in search of free fiction online than almost anyone else:

• Chris Dolley is making his book Resonance available as a free download [and an intriguing brain-bender of a story it is, too]
• The latest issue of Concatenation has been posted and includes the story “The Invisible Hand” by Allan M Rees
• Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist presents “The Best Monkey” by Daniel Abraham
• The new issue of Ray Gun Revival features fiction by Adrian Simmons, Paula R Stiles, O Charles Swallows, Jr., Steven Gerard, Chip Meador, M Keaton, Keanan Brand, L S King, and Paul Christian Glenn
• Book View Cafe presents chapter 1 of The Betrayal by Pati Nagle

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Once again my schedule means I’ll miss the bulk of this week’s Friday Flash, but as ever it’ll be collected up in next week’s post. Meanwhile, Sumit Dam came in early enough to make the cut with “The Black Dog“.

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And that’s it for another week, it seems. Don’t forget to let us know of anything you think merits inclusion in Friday Free Fiction; in the meantime, have a good weekend!

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to worry about how fast the weeks are flying by – it seems I scarcely finish wrapping up one weekly batch of free fiction before I start compiling another one.

But hey, it’s good to be busy, right? Right – so here’s this week’s batch of free sf online; a little smaller than usual, perhaps, but still plenty to be going on with…

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Just the one at ManyBooks:

• “The Eye of Alloria” by Rae Lori

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Gareth L Powell eschews flash fiction this week to reprint in full a story from his collection The Last Reef: “Hot Rain”

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Jason Stoddard continues to deliver chunks of his now-trunked novel Eternal Franchise; here’s chapter 2.3

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Tor.com is giving away electronic copies of Charles de Lint‘s novel Spiritwalk (if you’re a signed-in member of the site, natch, but that don’t cost nuffink, mistah). But you don’t need to log in or sign up to read “Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky in the same place. How’s about that, eh?

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Brain Harvest presents “Sky and Sea” by Vylar Kaftan; I’ve also added the site to the sidebar of justice, and as they’ve got a decent RSS feed you can follow I’m going to stop linking to individual stories from now on. Only so many hours in the week, you dig?

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Book View Cafe presents “Something For Everyone” by Jennifer Stevenson

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Subterranean Press presents “Her Voice in a Bottle” by Tim Pratt

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Strange Horizons presents part 2 of “Diana Comet” by Sandra McDonald

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Shadow Unit Season 2 is warming up with DVD Extra #1:  “La Befana”

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Orbit Books are giving away the first chapter of This Is Not a Game, the new metaverse technothriller from Walter Jon Williams (which is currently whispering sweet nothings from my to-be-read shelf as I type…)

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And here are the crumbs that SF Signal‘s ever-hungering web-vacuum caught that we’d missed:

• Mindflights presents “The One with the Waggly Tail” by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff
• There’s a new online genre short fiction webzine by the name of The Hive Mind; they have an RSS feed for your convenience, which is a good move
• Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist has the full text of “Precision Set” by L E Modesitt, Jr., from the forthcoming Viewpoints Critical collection

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And finally here’s some Friday Flash Fiction:

• “Wanderlust” by Shaun C Green… as well as “Heralded by Iron“, and “Punk’s Not Dead” and “Colours Move” (he’s been on a catch-up mission this week, y’see)
• “Three Blue Things” by Sarah Ellender
• “The King’s Pleasure” by Gaie Sebold
• “The Loneliest Whale in the World” by Sumit Dam
• “Navita” by Gareth D Jones (a Latin translation, no less)

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And there you go – turned out to be more stuff than I thought!

Still, the more the merrier, so keep those tipoffs and plugs coming in through the usual channels. In the meantime, have a great weekend!