Yet another genre magazine of good standing makes the migration to publishing entirely on the web. Apex Digest has been moving web-ward for some time, but now publisher and editor-in-chief Jason Sizemore announces the removal of the training wheels:
“In print, we
Good grief, would you believe it’s Friday already? Well, it surely is – and Friday means free fiction at Futurismic, as is customary. Eyeballs at the ready? Let’s go!
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Here’s another couple of titles from ManyBooks.net:
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Everything went a bit loopy with the Feedbooks RSS feed over the weekend, and I ended up with about 400 titles in my feed-reader, most of which seemed to be boxing-themed, for some odd reason. I think I only cleared out the duffers, and the sf titles I’ve already linked, but you may want to go browse around and check just in case.
Otherwise, there’s another huge wodge of Richard Kadrey‘s stuff:
Plus another novel by Matthew Phipps Shiel:
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Another free fiction site via SF Signal; Munseys, which has the following for your reading pleasure:
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Also via SF Signal are a few freebies from Solaris Books: a short story called “Tornado of Sparks” by James Maxey, originally published in The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, and the ongoing serialisation of Chris Roberson’s Three Unbroken.
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EOS Books are giving away a free electronic version of Karen Traviss‘ novel City of Pearl.
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At Subterranean Online this week, there’s an appreciation of Mike Resnick by Nancy Kress as well as a novella from Resnick, “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge“.
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And last but not least, your weekly helping of Friday Flash:
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And there it is; that should keep you busy for a while. Weekend web warriors should keep an eye on their feed readers over the next few days, as Futurismic begins syndicating its new resident webcomic – watch this space!
In the meantime, your tip-offs and shameless self-plugs are always welcome – FFF submission deadline is 1800 GMT.
Have a great weekend!
Happy Independence Day, America! With that long weekend ahead of you, you’ll be needing some fiction to while away the spare hours, right?
OK, so maybe not – it’ll keep until you’re all partied out, anyway. Everyone else – get stuck in!
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We’ll start off sedately with ManyBooks.net:
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Feedbooks continues to demonstrate the productivity power of crowdsourcing. I don’t know if they can keep up this pace forever, but there’s another random sackful of stories old and new:
And a big wodge of Richard Kadrey‘s stuff:
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Another chunk of Shadow Unit‘s “summertime DVD extras” have appeared – read the whole of “Vigil” so far.
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It’s new ‘zine season at Subterranean Press:
“Oddly (and delightfully) enough, we’ve chosen to kick off the special Mike Resnick issue of Subterranean Online with a brand new story by Jay Lake, as well as an insightful interview with same. His new novel, Escapement, has just hit the stands. “Chain of Fools” shares that novel’s setting, though it doesn’t depend on the novel to be enjoyed fully.
Next week, look for us to start serializing Mike Resnick’s classic novella, “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge.”
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There’s a new issue (#22) of Clarkesworld also:
There’s non-fiction, too:
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Not to mention issue 3 of Oddlands Magazine:
Plus poetry and a review.
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[links expunged]
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And another – Jake Freivald sez:
The latest issue of Flash Fiction Online is up!
Cheers, Jake!
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Via BoingBoing:
To celebrate the release of Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams, Night Shade Books has posted a self-contained excerpt from the book [and] the complete text of Williams’s Nebula Award-winning novella “The Green Leopard Plague” to their downloads page. They’ve also got a short interview with him here.
Implied Spaces comes highly recommended by a number of people, arguably the least influential of whom is myself – check out my review of the book, if you like.
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A seventeenth slice of Memory from Jayme Lynn Blaschke:
Flavius’ footsteps echoed eerily in the deathly silence of the hall. Barely a dozen liveried staff milled in confusion along the perimeter of the oblong chamber, with a like number of guards spaced at even intervals, cuayabs held unobtrusively. The balcony boxes, halfway up the vaulted ceiling, remained empty.
At the far end of the audience hall, seated upon ornate thrones on a raised marble dias polished so brightly it hurt the eyes to look at, were the Tricentennial Emperor and Empress.
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Gareth L Powell‘s been too busy to write anything for us this week, but he has by way of compensation, offered us the chance to download an excerpt from his forthcoming short story collection, The Last Reef.
Indeed, it looks like most of the Friday Flash Fictioneers are taking a sabbatical this week, but the die-hards are still on the case:
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And there’s your weekly dose of free fiction – I hope there’s something in there to keep your literary stomach from churning. Don’t forget to send us your tips and plugs for next week – deadline is 1800 GMT Friday afternoon. Have a great weekend!
First of the month means fiction time at Futurismic; this month’s offering is “Maquech” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a haunting and darkly beautiful tale of dreams and desperation set in a scarcity-riddled near-future Mexico City.
So get stuck in, and don’t forget to leave Silvia some feedback in the comments at the end!
The jewel encrusted beetle walked slowly across the table, dragging its golden chain behind. It was bigger than any other maquech he’d ever seen before and more richly decorated.
Gerardo put down the eyeglass.
“It’s not my usual purchase,” he said.
“It’s rare,” Mario replied. “This is the last one my grandfather made before he passed away.”
“Monkeys are the thing now. Everyone wants a monkey.”
“But it doesn’t need a lot of food or water,” Mario protested. “That’s a benefit.”
“Do you think my clients worry about things like food or water? Listen, I sold five ostriches two months ago. People want large animals now.”
It was a lie. He sold fish and birds and maybe a reptile or two. He could not afford extravagant purchases like ostriches.
“I need the money,” Mario confessed. “I want to go to Canada.”
“What for?”
“I want to see the polar bears before they disappear. Before all the ice melts away.” Continue reading MAQUECH by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Greetings, free fiction aficionados! We’ve got a pretty hefty batch here in compensation for my absence last week, so let’s get straight to it …
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Just a few from Manybooks.net:
“The Chamber Of Life” by Green Peyton Wertenbaker
“Nine Hard Questions About The Nature Of the Universe” by Lewis Shiner
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By comparison, the folk at Feedbooks have been busy beavers, and there’s enough here to keep you going for weeks, from proto-sf classics to pulp-era shorts. There are not only short stories …
… but full novels, too:
Crikey!
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Via SF Signal, there’s a veritable festival of Edgar Rice Burroughs at Project Gutenberg:
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A message hit the inbox from dj lotu5:
I think that this story I wrote – “Tissue Banking” – is about what Futurismic is about: the uncanny similarity between the future and the present. I’m a transgender artist, blogger and trouble maker, and I blog about the interplay of technology, transgender, sex and resistance.
Thanks, dj!
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Via Gareth D Jones, a new addition the the sidebar o’ justice: Concept SciFi webzine
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Warren Ellis makes a proclamation:
With the aid of the Colleen Doran Creator’s Grant, Kieron Gillen and Charity Larrison have completed their darkly magical graphic novel Busted Wonder, which you can read in its entirely online for free at bustedwonder.com.
You must go and read it now.
Obey the Ellis!
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From the High Lord of Free, Cory Doctorow:
For the 150th anniversary issue of The Bookseller […] the editors commissioned me to write a short-short story about the next 150 years of book sales. The result is called The Right Book, and it’s out in the current edition and online [first two pages, third page] as well.
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The increasingly ubiquitous Fantasy Book Spot is hosting a teaser chapter of Ken MacLeod‘s forthcoming novel The Night Sessions:
He slowed and dismounted fifty metres from the obstruction. A slope of rubble sprawled halfway across the road. The lower half of the front of a tenement block had been blasted out. Two floors had collapsed. No vehicles had been crushed, but the wreckage of several collisions remained slewed in the road. Ferguson hadn’t seen anything like this in real life for a long time, and now seldom even on television. He took off his cycle clips, pushed the bike one-handed and stared ahead. After a step or two he remembered the weight on his back.
Looking forward to that one – MacLeod novels rarely disappoint me.
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Jayme Lynn Blaschke is up to instalment sixteen of Memory:
Bolts of green flame spewed from the cuayabs.
Quite!
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Here are the Friday Flash Fictioneer pieces from last week which were delayed by my gallivanting out of town:
And just to make everyone feel like total amateurs, Gareth D Jones offers his now-published-in-Nature piece – you can see “Travel By Numbers” in all its native (or should that be Natural?) glory.
And here’s this week‘s Friday Flash material:
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And that’s your lot – if that huge stack from Feedbooks can’t keep you occupied for a while, you must be some sort of reading machine. Don’t forget to make time to drop us in your tips and plugs for next week, though – deadline is 1730 hours GMT.
Have a great weekend!