Tag Archives: science fiction

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Friday Free Fiction for 29th may

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It’s nearly June, my band played a show last night, and I’ve had a long and busy day. So I hope you’ll forgive me skipping the banter and getting straight into this week’s batch of free science fiction stories from the intertubes – onwards!

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A bunch from ManyBooks:

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And a bunch more from FeedBooks:

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Subterranean Online presents:

And also from Subterranean:

Those of you interested in a peak at the world of Kage Baker’s The Women of Nell Gwynne’s will be very interested in her novelette, “Speed, Speed the Cable” (pdf file), which explores the Gentleman’s Speculative Society, the Company Precursor that plays an important role in her new novella, as well as her next novel, Not Less Than Gods.

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Strange Horizons presents “If Wishes Were Horses” by Tiffani Angus-Bodie

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The New Yorker presents “The Slows” by Gail Hareven [via World SF News]

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Revolution SF presents “The Four Jerks of the Apocalypse” by Camille Alexa

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The latest Shadow Unit DVD Extra is “Misadventure”

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Via Futurismic‘s own Tom Marcinko (who has apparently sold them a couple of stories, the saucy devil) comes the news that Circlet Press is publishing some free-to-read erotic sf/f stories on their website at the moment.

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If you’re following along with Jason Stoddard‘s Eternal Franchise, we’re up to chapter 8.2

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Once again the SF Signal gang make a lazy man’s life a little easier with not one, not two but three free fiction round-up posts. There’s a smattering of extras as well

  • The Online Pulps Site presents “The Last Monster” by Gardner Fox
  • Atomjack presents “Purple” by Alissa Grosso
  • The latest issue of Allegory includes fiction by JC Tabler, Michael Andreoni, Jennifer Linnaea, Adam Armstrong, Martin Turton, RJ Astruc, Philip Roberts, AJ Brown, and Ty Drago
  • Web Fiction Guide offers free online novels, story collections, and reviews.
  • Book View Cafe presents:

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And last but not least, here’s a handful of Friday Flash Fiction:

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And that’s your lot! You know the drill about getting in touch with plugs and tip-offs for free fiction, right? Awesome – so have a good weekend!

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Is a Terminator scenario possible?

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metropolis h+ Magazine conducted a poll of “roboticists, AI workers, SF writers, and other techie types” (the SF writers were David Brin and Vernor Vinge) to see if they thought a “Terminator-like scenario” was possible, and if so, how likely it was. (Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Boiling it down (read the whole thing here), the consensus seems to be 1) forget about the time travel; 2) don’t expect a super-intelligent Skynet to spontaneously awaken and start wiping us out (though rather alarmingly, it was generally thought that was just “highly unlikely,” not flat-out impossible); but 3) do expect a future full of robots, both beneficial and warlike–though in the latter case, the intelligence directing them is likely to be humans of a destructive bent, rather than an AI with its own designs on the planet.

Knowing what humans are capable of, this is not much comfort.

Even though I am by nature optimistic.

(Image: 1935 tobacco card of Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis, from Film Virtual History.)

[tags]robots, Terminator, artificial intelligence, science fiction, robotics, predictions[/tags]

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Friday Free Fiction for 22nd May

It’s Friday again… and unless I’m mistaken, this is one of those weekends where folk on both sides of the pond have a Monday off. Which is reason to be cheerful – so why not celebrate by reading some free science fiction stories online, eh? C’mon, your boss is probably coasting his way to close-of-business anyway, who’s gonna notice? Step this way…

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Here’s a bunch from ManyBooks:

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And a couple from FeedBooks:

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Jason Stoddard‘s Creative Commons release of Eternal Franchise continues; we’re up to chapter 8.1

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Yet another Shadow Unit Season 2 DVD Extra: “The Truth”

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News from Arkham Tales:

Issue #3 of Arkham Tales is now available for free download! This issue features a cover by George Cotronis, and contains fiction by Nicholas Ozment, J.C. Koch, Rob Brooks, Nandi Ekles, Eric W. Jepson, Maura McHugh, J.J. Beazley and Edward Morris.

Their server seems a little flaky at the moment (possibly just overloaded on release day) so give the refresh button a few jabs if you get a connection error.

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I’m not sure if it’s entirely meant to be read as fiction, but Ken MacLeod‘s “Invasion Dream” is a pretty weird read nonetheless.

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HUB Magazine #87 features “Nightlife” by Dean Grondo

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Here’s Memory part 37 by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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The SF Signal gang have made my life a little easier with a couple of free fiction link posts. Meanwhile, here’s another few snippets that passed through there over the week:

  • The latest issue of Three Crow Press includes fiction by Catherine Knutsson, Glenn Lewis Gillette, T A  Moore, C M  SheVLin, Nu Yang, Brian Dolton, Shannon Page and Jay Lake, Gary McMahon, David Priebe, and Rick Silva
  • Conjunctions presents “Predecessor” by Jeff VanderMeer; looks like they have more free fiction over there, too, but a distinct lack of RSS feed.

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And to close us up, Sumit Dam sneaks in with “Lives of Quiet Desperation“.

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And that’s all, folks, as the cartoon pig used to say. Don’t forget to drop us a line if there’s something you think we should collect here next week, but more importantly, have the best weekend you can, OK? Peace…

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Winners of Futurismic-only draw for Terra Insegura and Marseguro

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Actual Book Just a quick note to announce the winners of the Futurismic-readers-only draw for copies of my science fiction novels Terra Insegura (just released) and its prequel, Marseguro, both published by DAW Books.

The signed copy of Terra Insegura goes to Mac Tonnies of Kansas City, Missouri, while the copy of Marseguro was won by Kian Momtahan of Bristol, U.K.

If you missed out on the Futurismic draw and would like a chance to win the books for yourself, I’m doing two more weeks of draws open to anyone. If you’d like to enter, just send me an email at edward(at)edwardwillett.com with the subject line Terra Insegura.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who took part.

 

[tags]books,Edward Willett, Terra Insegura, science fiction, contests[/tags]

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Rudy Rucker guesting at BoingBoing

Rudy RuckerRudy Rucker is one of the authors I go out of my way for, so I’m stoked to see he’s guest-posting at BoingBoing for a couple of weeks; he’s kicked off today with a brief introduction to his “gnarly” plotting methods.

Experience  shows that Rucker’s fiction divides opinion sharply between those who love it and those who loathe it; I’m firmly in the former camp, though I think I understand what it is about transrealism that puts others off. [image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

That said, he’s got lots of interesting and weird stuff to say outside of his stories: he’s a professor of mathematics with a psychedelic outlook, he was a core member of the cyberpunk movement (which means he has some great tales to tell about the other characters involved) and he’s got a unique eye for photographing the mundane and making it seem alien. Go pay him some attention; you may not agree with him, but I defy you to be indifferent!

So, any other Rucker fans in the house? Which story or novel would you recommend to a newcomer to Rucker’s body of work?