Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Rolling in the Free Fiction

Tuesday are great!  There's two great stories from Lightspeed, Lovecraft audio at Protecting Project Pulp, an so much more greatness. And you know 'em, you love 'em, so be sure to visit SF Signal, Free SF Reader, Free Speculative Fiction Online, BestScienceFictionStories.com, Variety SF, and SFFaudio.


[Art From  "Alive, Alive Oh" - linked in fiction and audio fiction]

Fiction
• At AE: "The Mission" by Siobhan Gallagher. Science Fiction.
     "It wasn’t every day that you saw a nun on the hover bus to the outermost part of town. Riley was stunned when he got on, and the driver had to remind him to pay. He sat down across from her; it was just them and some old fart snoozing in the back. According to his cube, she was of Korean descent with some Hispanic traits; her oval brown face — a face that said she was in her late thirties — poked out of the black wimple. She didn’t have any luggage, only a small backpack on her lap."

• At Author's Site: "The Best Defense" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Fantasy. Legal Fiction.
      "They tell me time has no meaning here. I sit cross-legged in a glade, surrounded by willow trees and strong oak and all sorts of green plants I don’t recognize. Flowers bloom out of season—roses next to tulips next to mums. The air is warm, the breeze is fresh, and I have never felt more trapped in my life."

• At The Colored Lens: "Four Leaf Clovers" by Amy Holt. Speculative Fiction.
       "Popcorn steam and grill smoke perfumed the humid summer air. Children with blue popsicle mustaches giggled in step with their running legs as they darted under bleacher beams and up and down sloping hills. One of them tripped. A man dressed in a pressed polo and fine posture helped the child up with his free hand."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Holy Diver" by Grá Linnaea. Fantasy.
      "In hell, being a priest makes you a punk. You have to fight for respect; there's a hierarchy to the damned, and fallen priests are dead bottom. You don't mention you're here on His plan."

• At Lightspeed: "Game of Chance" by Carrie Vaughn. Fantasy.
       "Once, they’d tried using sex to bring down a target. It had seemed a likely plan: Throw an affair in the man’s path, guide events to a compromising situation, and momentum did the rest. That was the theory—a simple thing, not acting against the person directly, but slantwise. But it turned out it was too direct, almost an attack, touching on such vulnerable sensibilities. They’d lost Benton, who had nudged a certain woman into the path of a certain Republic Loyalist Party councilman and died because of it. He’d been so sure it would work."

• At Lightspeed: "Alive, Alive Oh" by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley. Science Fiction.
     "The waves crash onto the blood-red shore, sounding just like the surf on Earth: a dark rumbling full of power. It’s been seventeen years since we left"

• At Mad Scientist Journal: "A Case Study of the Side Effects of Nauseamin and their Possible Treatment" by Diana Parparita. Zombies. [via SF Signal]
      "Looking back, I think I should have followed news of the plague more closely, asked permission to examine the afflicted, and tried to find a cure, if only to make my father proud. But all I could think of was Aidan and our wedding and the news on TV was always just background noise to me … until Aidan died."

Flash Fiction
  • At Quantum Muse: "Smelf" by Michele Dutcher. Science Fiction.
  • At Strange Horizons: "Air on a G String" by Jude Cowan Montague. Speculative Poem.
  • At Strange Horizons: "Podcast: June Poetry" Audio. Speculative Poetry.
  • At 365 Tomorrows: "The Stud" by Desmond Hussey. Science Fiction.
E-Books
• At Amazon: The Damned Summer by Scott Weaver. Horror. [via Pixel of Ink]
At Smashwords:
Audio Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "Alive, Alive Oh" by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley. Science Fiction.
      Described Above.

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "The Misplaced Battleship -  Part 2 of 2" by Harry Harrison. Science Fiction.[via SF Signal]
      "The original Stainless Steel Rat story - and if you haven't read the SSR books, why the heck not???"

• At Protecting Project Pulp: "The Nameless City" by H. P. Lovecraft. Horror.
      "When I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was traveling in a parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great-grandfather of the eldest pyramid; and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had dared to see.."

• At SFFaudio: "The Destiny Of Special Agent Ace Galaksi" by Maissa Bessada.
     " It’d be easy to say the show is just bonkers, but that’d give you the idea that it doesn’t work on a certain level that it really does. The plot is nonsensical, in the way that some of Philip K. Dick’s are. But If I said it was like a Philip K. Dick plot that’d give you absolutely the wrong idea. The Destiny Of Special Agent Ace Galaksi is far more like the Goon Show than PKD. "

Other Genres

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