Tag Archives: science fiction

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Friday Free Fiction for 19th December

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for the days to start getting longer again. Still, we’re nearly there now, and it’s holiday time for most of us – so put your feet up and enjoy some free science fiction stories, why don’tcha?

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Here’s a few from Feedbooks:

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A reminder from EOS/HarperCollins:

For November and December only, click to download a free eBook of Adam Troy Castro’s Emissaries From the Dead.

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Strange Horizons presents “How to Hold Your Breath” by Meredith Schwartz

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Tor.com presents “Firstborn” by Brandon Sanderson (the guy who’s finishing off the Wheel of Time series, apparently).

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Mindflights presents “The Void Test” by Therese L Arkenberg.

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Polu Texni presents part 2 of “Running Free” by Mark Sherwood

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It’s been a while since the last instalment, but things are back on track with Memory #29 from Jayme Lynn Blaschke

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Something more than a trifle blasphemous from Hal Duncan:

See, y’all know Revelation, right? The last book of the New Testament, the one with all the Antichrist and Armageddon gubbins, all the Rapture and wrath of God malarky? You may not have read it, but you’re bound to be familiar with its zany eschatological content, even if only by way of horror movies and heavy metal lyrics. Well, if you have read it, you may recall the lines where a curse is laid out on anyone that fucks around with the text. Add to the words of this book, we’re told, and that’s bad news, baby. Take away from the words of this book, and that’s just as bad. We’re talking biblical plagues, baby, a pointy reckoning upon anyone who adds to or takes away from the words of this book.

Course, it doesn’t say anything about changing the order of those words.

Which is exactly what he has done; violent eRa is a story told using all the words from the book of Revelation in a different order, featuring God as the villain of the piece. Not that Duncan seems particularly bothered by the risk of a curse, anyway…

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SpaceWesterns presents:

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Here are the extras that the SF Signal crew picked up:

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And here’s some Friday Flash Fiction, some of which has a festive flavour:

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And that’s about your lot. Friday Free Fiction is going to go into hibernation until the new year (because most everyone will be too busy to pay any attention, AMIRITE?), but your tip-offs and plugs are always welcome for the next instalment on January 2nd. Adios!

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More future art: Razer

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Via Irene Gallo at Tor.com (who, as Tor’s art director, surely knows exactly what the hell she is talking about), here’s some more awesome near-future science fictional artwork from a contributor to the ConceptArt forums who goes by the name of Razer:

gunmen in a corridor by Razer

cyberpunk shootout by Razer

futuristic city skyline by Razer

The guy has a knack with the gritty street-level stuff as well as the large-scale vision, and the thread where Razer posted these has literally dozens of other images from our cyberpunk tomorrows right out into outer space, all of which are pretty bloody impressive – to this fumble-fingered non-artist, at least.

I’m getting more and more tempted to do some sort of regular art slot here at Futurismic… what think you, readers?

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Friday Free Fiction for 12th December

Outside my flat it’s cold, damp and very dark. Indoors, however, I can bathe in the comforting glow of a flatscreen monitor replete with links to free science fiction stories available online… and what better way to get into the seasonal spirit than by sharing, eh?

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A couple of classics from Manybooks:

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Here’s a handful from Feedbooks:

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Via OldMiser and others, another freebie from Gwyneth Jones:

Castles Made Of Sand […] should have had a fortunate début, given that the first episode had just won a major award when it came out, but it was all a bit of a rush, and I’ve always wanted to go back and give the script a scale and polish, nothing too painful. So here it is, a few pages shorter, bloopers excised and every sentence a bit tighter, tho’ possibly only the writer can tell.

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A couple of republications from Jay Lake – “The Golden Whip” and “Real North”

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COSMOS Magazine presents “Delivery” by Trent Jamieson

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A message from Ben Rawluk:

I have a couple more short-short SF/weird fictions up at my blog: “Sarah in the Wheat“, “Street Performances” and “It’s All Biohazards Down Here“.

As well, I’ve posted a couple more of my Filthy Postcard Stories series, #3, #4 and #5.

Cheers, Ben!

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Strange Horizons presents “The Same Old Story” by Naomi Bloch

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The new issue of Ideomancer (which should really get itself an RSS feed) features fiction and poetry by George S Walker, A C Wise, Rachel Swirsky, Marsheila Rockwell, David Kopaska-Merkel and J C Runolfson.

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Another update from Subterranean Online; I don’t usually link to podcast stories here (simply because so many other places already do) but I thought I’d break ranks for this one:

…we’re capping off the fall issue with a real corker — one of Alastair Reynolds’ fine space opera novellas, read by Sam Mowry. Head over and check out Thousandth Night, which was the jumping off point for Al’s most recent novel, House of Suns.

Great writer, Al Reynolds; go listen.

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And here’s the stuff that SF Signal‘s immense trawler net caught that I’d have otherwise missed:

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And to finish, a few bits of Friday Flash Fiction:

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And there you have it. Don’t forget to let us know if there’s something you think I might miss! In the meantime, have a great weekend.

Blasphemous Geometries

Giving Science Fiction the ‘Criterion Collection’ Treatment

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This month in Blasphemous Geometries: what lessons can be taken from the successful branding of classic cinema and applied to science fiction literature?

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

Jonathan McCalmont suggests that repackaging the masterworks of the genre with a side serving of serious critical examination might add a cachet to science fiction which it has previously struggled to attain.

Continue reading Giving Science Fiction the ‘Criterion Collection’ Treatment →

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How much science does a science fiction writer need?

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Not just scientific knowledge, but technological, economical, social, geopolitical… you need the lot to be able to write believable near-future science fiction. Or so says the latest missive from Jason Stoddard discussing the burden of the modern science fiction writer:

If you want to write believable near-future fiction, you can’t choose a single point of advancement. You need to have a good understanding of advances in many different fields, and you need to be able to imagine how these can come together, for good or for bad. And to be really believable, you’ll need to know more than you ever wanted to know about how the world works, economically and socially, as well as where the trends are heading.

Otherwise, your fiction will soon read like that Golden Age lit, filled with spaceships manned by human calculators and spinning reels of tape.

He may have a point. But then again, he may have missed the point, or focussed on one that matters more to some than others. Jeremy Tolbert responds to Jason’s closing statement above:

If you’re intimidated by the accelerating advance of the future, don’t let that stop you from writing SF. You don’t have to write it that way. Personally, I take great enjoyment in throwing reality out the window when I write my SF. SF has only ever been about believability to a small subset of readers.  Believability in the context of tech, anyway. It, like all literature, does revolve around the believability of human action and emotion, however. Keep that in mind and you’ll write great fiction, and very few people will care about that other stuff.

I’m not an experienced enough writer to know which angle I prefer, but as a reader I’m quite fond of both – and while we keep the focus near-future here at Futurismic, I don’t think we’re anywhere close to the line of science fiction that’s so hard it’s rigid.

Which do you prefer?