The title says it all, fictioneers – hard-workin’ fiction editor Chris East’s batteries are fully recharged, and so Futurismic is open to fiction submissions once again. Don’t forget to give the guidelines a thorough read before you submit – good luck!
Tag Archives: science fiction
Friday Free Fiction for 2nd January
Well, here we are in a brand new year – how did that happen so quickly?
Some of you will have been back at work today, while some of you are probably still trying to shake off hangovers from the last few days, (and some of us are caught between the two)… but you can all rest easy in the knowledge that I’ve been collecting free science fiction links for the last two weeks!
Your weekend reading starts here, ladies and gents:
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Here’s a bunch from Feedbooks:
- “Eight Keys to Eden” by Mark Irvin Clifton
- “The Jupiter Weapon” by Charles Louis Fontenay
- “Dead World” by Jack Douglas
- “Test Rocket!” by Jack Douglas
- “The Curse of Yig” by H P Lovecraft
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A couple at Manybooks:
- “The Undersea Tube” by L Taylor Hansen
- “The Beginning” by Henry Hasse
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And a singleton at Project Gutenberg:
- “Junior Achievement” by William Lee
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Here’s another freebie from Jay Lake: “Lux Fiat”
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Strange Horizons presents “Engines of Survival” by Larissa Kelly
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Hub Magazine presents “The Watchers at the Window” by Marie Faye Prior
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Clarkesworld presents:
- “Celadon” by Desirina Boskovich
- “Teaching Bigfoot to Read” by Geoffrey W Cole
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Via the SF Signal gang:
The good folks over at Snowbooks have posted a free short story from George Mann called “The Shattered Teacup”. It’s subtitled “A Maurice Newbury Investigation” which means it’s set in the Steampunk/Doctor Who world of his awesome novel The Affinity Bridge. Snowbooks has made the story available in both PDF and audio formats for your choice of reading and/or listening enjoyment.
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Madeline Ashby has a five-part speculative story over at the excellent Worldchanging site: “βoyfriend” follows a high-school girl of the near future in the run-up to Prom night, and is well worth a look.
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Some new titles have cropped up in Baen Books‘ free library
- Earthweb by Marc Stiegler
- Starliner by David Drake
- The Shadow of Saganami by David Weber
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Among a trio of new poems at Polu Texni is a subtly sf-nal piece called “Unruly Harvest” by friend-of-Futurismic Shira Lipkin.
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A note from Jake Freivald:
New free flash is up on Flash Fiction Online: “The Fallen Angel” by Mike Resnick and “As Their Eyes Touched God” by Robin Gillespie are the speculative fiction pieces for the month.
Cheers, Jake!
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Via the newly-revived Genre Files:
Stumbled across a new webzine the other day that looks rather interesting. It’s called Three Crow Press and it’s produced by relatively new independent genre publisher Morrigan Books.
Predominantly dark fantasy and horror according to the strapline, so not really prime Futurismic fodder… but it certainly deserves a place in the Free Fiction Sidebar of Justice. 🙂
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If you want to catch up with the latest fiction publications over at Book View Cafe, you can check out the lists of short stories, novellas and novel excerpts, which are updated on a weekly basis.
By the way, there’ll be more news to come regarding Futurismic and Book View Cafe – watch this space!
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And here’s the inevitable collection of goodies that SF Signal caught:
- Mindflights presents “Gaming Real Life” by K C Shaw and “Santa Is My Homeboy” by Rachel V Olivier
- Afterburn SF presents “Ismay’s Run” by Joanne Hall
- “Kat and Mouse: Guns for Hire” is a new, weekly web serial by Abner Senires about a pair of guns-for-hire trying to eke out a living in the 2042 in the California Free State metroplex of Bay City.
- Grantbridge Street & other misadventures presents: The Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction comic book adaptation of Michael Moorcock‘s Behold the Man [editor’s note – I’m not entirely sure this work is out of copyright; also, the page features a rather annoying autoplaying flash music gizmo which you’ll probably want to scroll down and deactivate right away. Why anyone would choose to make their site *more* like MySpace is quite beyond me, but there you go; it takes all sorts.]
- The latest issue of Ray Gun Revival has fiction from Clinton Lawrence, Alice M Roelke, Drew Arrants, Richard S Levine, Timothy A Sayell, Martin Turton, M Keaton, Keanan Brand, and Sean T M Stiennon
- AntipodeanSF has its latest issue up with short speculative fiction stories by David McVeigh, Richard Kerslake, Mark Farrugia, Mark Tremble, Marian Stone, Shaun A Saunders, Anna Potts, KJ Hannah Greenberg, David Such, and Simon Petrie
- Issue #14 of The Future Fire presents stories by John Kratman, Rick Novy, and Richard Thieme
- The Scientific Indian presents: “Live and Exclusive” by Aditya Sudarshan
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And finally, some Friday Flash: since the last round-up, Neil Beynon has published “Beats” and “New Space“, while Gareth D Jones has delivered – appropriately enough – “Another Year“, and Shaun C Green – even more appropriately – brings us “Two Thousand and Eight“.
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And that’s the lot – more than enough to keep you busy there, I’m thinking. Don’t forget we’re always open for your tip-offs and plugs, so keep ’em coming… but for now, Happy New Year to you all!
Rudy Rucker defines UFO science fiction
Maverick mathematician Rudy Rucker is thinking about topics for his next novel, and it looks like UFOs might get a look-in. Partly in response to a recent Loving the Alien column by our very own Mac Tonnies, Rucker is at pains to define the subgenre carefully:
I think we should distinguish between, on the one hand, SF UFO novels and, on the other hand, alien invasion novels along the lines of, say, Greg Bear or Larry Niven. I think, for instance, Neal Stephenson’s recent Anathem, is more of an alien invasion novel, although it’s close to being an SF UFO novel as well.
So, with that distinction made, what should an SF UFO novel contain?
I’d say the essence of an SF UFO novel is point (a) below. Points (b) through (f) all follow from (a).
(a) The novel includes flying saucer alien encounters similar to those described in lowbrow tabloid newspapers, but is neither ignorantly credulous nor mockingly parodistic.
(b) The aliens use a fuzzy technology that might amount to psychic powers. The saucers, in other words, aren’t machines.
(c) The aliens are surreptitiously observing or infiltrating Earth rather than overtly invading—at least for now.
(d) We have some creepy human/alien sex acts.
(e) The aliens aren’t necessarily evil, they may be bringing enlightenment and transcendence.
(f) The aliens might be from somewhere other than a distant planet, that is, they might come from small size scales, from a parallel world, or might be made of some impalpable substance like dark matter.Part of the game in writing an SF UFO novel is making up scientific reasons why the tabloid-level UFO phenomenon could in fact relate to something real…
As Mac’s essay pointed out, there is a distinct paucity of novels that deal with the UFO phenomenon – maybe 2009 could be the year for a UFO renaissance? [image by sabertasche2]
Hell knows it would make a refreshing change from sexy vampires.
But the Owl Knows – charity science fiction anthology
One last item from the Futurismic mail-room before the year closes: Sean Stubblefield writes to inform us about But the Owl Knows, an anthology of stories and art which he has edited, and from which all proceeds will go to Save The Children. Provided you’re willing to brave MySpace, you can find out more on Sean’s page.
Ray Bradbury on the real Martians
Ray Bradbury has written the foreward for a recent issue of National Geographic, fans of The Martian Chronicles will apreciate his sublimely poetic enthusiasm for space exploration:
I like to think of the cosmos as a theater, yet a theater cannot exist without an audience, to witness and to celebrate. Robot craft and mighty telescopes will continue to show us unimaginable wonders. But when humans return to the moon and put a base there and prepare to go to Mars and become true Martians, we—the audience—literally enter the cosmic theater. Will we finally reach the stars?
Also check out the accompanying art by Michael Whelan.