ChiZine, Pathfinder Fiction, Eric James Stone Audio and More Freebies.

A bunch of good free fiction today, led off by ChiZine which has another batch of professional dark fiction out. Tor has a free story by Ken Macleod and there is another cool Daily Science Fiction Story up. There's a new 'zine, plus great serial and audio fiction in a variety of flavors. Probably other categories tonight.








@ChiZine: Volume 47, Week 12

"The Burn Victim" by Sarah Langan.

"“Your turn. Where to?” Henry asked. His lips shined with cheese grease, and I added slob to my mental list: Things I hate about Henry, # 32."

"Familiar Eyes" by Barry Hollander.

"Each time she returned, he killed her. She lurched from the woods again. By the time he grabbed an aluminum bat, she was fumbling with the back gate."

"Final Girl Theory" by A. C. Wise.

"Everyone knows the opening sequence of Kaleidoscope. Even if they’ve never seen any other part of the movie (and they have, even if they won’t admit it), they know the opening scene. "

"Grandmother" by Samantha Henderson.

"They’ve sunk a shaft deep in the dirt of the meadow and chained her there. Her hands are unbound, and she is very afraid. Fifty feet away and crouched in the ferns I can smell her fear."

"Hotline" by David Sakmyster.

"“Hotline Central. This is John. Talk to me.” He pressed the phone’s mute button for a moment as a sudden, long yawn struggled free. God, this night shift was an infuriating mixture of extremes—either the hours stretched on intolerably, requiring a superhuman capacity to remain awake, or else the phone rang incessantly with the tragic or the depressed and their cries of woe."

"Machina" by An Owomoyela.

"We gave up on AI long before the war. Not to say we didn’t come close. We made good strides: diagnostic doctors, air traffic assistants, anything that could be sorted through a rubric or summited with pure computational power"

"Mindfuck" by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt.

"Will Hartford pressed his way through the crowd gathered in front of his dorm. Two paramedics guided a gurney down the steps. Will’s roommate Devon was on the gurney, asleep or unconscious. Will rubbed the dataplug at the base of his skull."

"Night is a Clear Green Gem" by Darren Speegle.

"Ah, back again. And the night that same emerald I remember. The reflections of the Mediterranean dancing on every surface, from the volcanic rock formations of the shore to the silky dome of the September sky. All radiating from a central, as yet invisible beacon below: the Church of Absinthe, whose bottle-stocked chancel faces out over the sea like the prow of a mighty ghost ship."

"The Third Bride" by David de Beer.

"Gaby walked down the aisle towards the man who’d killed her sisters. You are stone."

@Tor.com: "Earth Hour" by Ken Macleod. Science Fiction.

"There are ever so many ways to conduct a war. Only a few of them look like war."

Sci-Fi Freedom has its fourth quarterly issue online, showcasing up and coming talent. It looks very good, though reading online flash is beyond the capabilities of my clunky computer.

Online Here [via SF Signal]




@Daily Science Fiction: "Blivet in the Temporal Lobes" by Dave Raines.

"June put her nametag on. It was blank. She stepped past the flying carpet hovering beside her bed and whistled. On the wall, the pages of the calendar flapped past April and May, held themselves open until the name "June" could wiggle out from under the mountain wildflowers and attach itself to her nametag."

Serial Fiction
@Paizo.com: "The Ironroot Deception Chapter Four: The Beast" by Robin D. Laws.

"The weirdness of the creature's distant cries washes over the prisoners like a crashing wave. The elves have arrayed themselves behind them. With swords outstretched, they impel the captives into the newly revealed inner chambers of the Ironroot."

@Philippine Genre Stories: "The Confessional (Part 2)" by Cyan Abad-Jugo. Science Fiction.

"Around him, the Eve’s festivities went on, people crowding around the glassed-in balconies of the townrise to view the endless volumetric displays hovering in the synthetic heavens above the yearly re-imagined wilderness, but a dark blot spread in his mind and blinded him to all."

@StarShipSofa: "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" by Eric James Stone, read by Mike Allen. (Nebula nominated story)

"Sol Central Station floated amid the fusing hydrogen of the solar core, 400,000 miles under the surface of the sun, protected only by the thin shell of an energy shield, but that wasn’t why my palm sweat slicked the plastic pulpit of the station’s multidenominational chapel."

Serial Audio
@The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: "Night’s Plutonian Shore" Part One by Jack Mangan.

"This epic tale opens in 1849 when a poet is murdered in the streets of Baltimore. The man behind the seemingly random murder manages to elude the law until — in 1889 — Agents Bruce Campbell and Brandon Hill track him down. The assassin, Mikael Scharnusser, gives the slip to the agents on revealing his “talent” and the madman’s intentions to bring down the House of Usher."

Fan Audio

	@Pendant Productions: Issue 5 of Green Arrow: Shooting Star. Ollie and Dinah spar with lovers and each other while a tip-off leads them to a crime ring!
	@Pendant Productions: Issue 65 of Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira.

Diana strives to build peace while Doctor Psycho powers up and General Lane bulldozes INSCOM!