Probability Angels, Tobias Buckell, Weird Tales, and More

More free goodies, with a big thanks to John DeNardo of SF Signal once again.


E-Fiction
At Manybooks, Probability Angels by Joseph Devon (2008).

"Matthew Huntington’s problems seem to keep growing. Not only is he seeing things in garbage cans but his mentor doesn’t think he’s working up to his full potential, his best friend can’t offer any solace but drunken confusion, and his wife is dying in Central Park. Of course, the fact that Matthew himself died over two decades ago isn’t helping things. And then things start to really go wrong. Come explore the world of Matthew and Epp and see what a samurai from Feudal Japan has to do with the course of modern physics, what a two-thousand year old Roman slave has to do with the summit of Mount Everest, and what a dead man from Brooklyn has to do with the fate of the world."

In free e-book formats HERE.



In time for awards season Tobias Buckell has made his short story "The People’s Machine" available on Sribd. Very cool.

You can read it online HERE (and download it if you are registered.) [via SF Signal]






And lots of new free fiction online at Weird Tales.

“Detours on the Way to Nothing” by Rachel Swirsky
“You gasp when you notice my toes edging over the precipice — then gasp harder a moment later when you see my hair floating in the wind. It looks like feathers.”

"Renovations” by Matthew Pridham
“We heard screams, tasted the blood that spilled on our lawns as the vandals were infected, as they turned on one another.”

“The Difficulties of Evolution” by Karen Heuler
"How beautiful it was to watch as characteristics became form, as the infant with a lithe crawl became a cat; as the toddler with the steady gaze became an owl, as the child who ran became a horse. It was magnificent."

“Wendigo” by Micaela Morrissette.
“The meat department was a gargantuan walk-in refrigerator: the space so enormous and the cold mist so dense that she could not see from one wall to the opposite. Chicken, goat, bear, salmon, pork, lamb, conch, squab…”

“Creature” by Ramsey Shehadeh.
“He was big as the moon and black as the night, and he came crashing into the city like a silent meteor.”

“Time and the Orpheus” by Chiles Samaniego.
“A remarkable number and variety of people gathered around John Bastion; positively magnetized by the gawky, dark, inexplicably odd young lad with the horn, they watched and listened with slack jaws and glazed eyes.”

“Landscape, With Fish” by Karen Heuler.
“He never actually saw the fish take off — he always caught them flying, instead — but he had to assume they did a kind of leap first, so he put up a higher fence.”

“First Photograph” by Zoran Živković.
“Exactly two months and eleven days after my twin brother and I were conceived, he decided not to be born.”

All online HERE. [via SF Signal]


Audio Fiction
Escape Pod has up its latest episode, number 186 with "Chrysalis" by Mary Robinette Kowal, read by Cunning Minx. 27 minutes.

"People ask me if I ever get involved with the subjects of my documentaries. I have a difficult time imagining that they would ask my male colleagues the same question, but they seem to expect women to be more emotional. In response, I tend to grit my teeth and answer very patiently with another question. How could I do my job if I were part of the story? Only by maintaining a sacred distance could I have any hope of understanding someone’s life. A documentarian records, but does not participate."

Available streaming and in MP3 downloads HERE.


Gaming
At The Core Mechanic, a 4th edition D&D "The Skill Challenges of War - Part 13: Routing the Enemy" online HERE.

Greywulf’s Lair has an interesting look at the relative power of characters from various D&D editions in "6 is 4 is 1" HERE.

And over at QDII, I've put 1E D&D interpretations of a monster and a spell from a couple of comics I read at The Horrors of It All. They are HERE.


Art
At The Lair of the Evil DM, a cool little gallery of various pulp art.


Online HERE.








Video
Now available at the Internet Archive, a few episodes of the classic 1958 British TV show, The Invisible Man. Available streamong and in ogg, MPEG4, and cinepack downloads.

Invisible Man - Secret Experiment ,
Invisible Man - Crisis in the Desert,
Invisible Man - Behind the Mask,
Invisible Man - The Locked Room,
and Invisible Man - Shadow on the Screen 1958.