Escape from the Planet of the Luddites with Free Fiction

Just back from vacationing in the Land of the Luddites and here is the first of several mixed "catching up"and new free fiction posts that will come over the next couple of days. Lots of good stuff!





Fiction
• At Author's Site: "Twenty Years Later, By Separation Peak" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Alternate History.
     "A fox will be elected without saying a word, Playing the saint in public living on barley bread, Afterwards he will very suddenly tyrannize, Putting his foot on the greatest ones"

• At Black Gate: "The Death of the Necromancer, Part Five" by Martha Wells. Fantasy.
     "Nicholas Valiarde is a passionate, embittered nobleman with an enigmatic past. Consumed by thoughts of vengeance, he is consoled only by thoughts of the beautiful, dangerous Madeline. He is also the greatest thief in all of Ile-Rien…"

• At Lightspeed: "Golden Apple" by Sophia McDougall. Fantasy.
      "The process of transforming sunlight into a solid object had been complete about a month when we broke into the lab and stole as much as we could carry. Carrying it was an issue, actually—obviously we were fairly sure it wouldn’t weigh much. But what do you carry sunlight in? Some sort of vacuum flask seemed appropriate. We didn’t want the sunlight to leak, or get contaminated. But would it die, somehow, if we shut it up in the dark?"

 • At Lightspeed: "Division of Labor"by Benjamin Roy Lambert. Science Fiction.
      "No one said anything, but Sull could tell they were all a little jealous when he lost his arms and legs. The arms went first, the left one during a bath and the right one a few days later, while he was being fed. Then both legs went at once, which was rare, and Sull was proud of it.

• At Nightmare Magazine: "And Yet, Her Eyes" by Brit Mandelo. Horror.
     "Sasha came back from Kandahar in pieces, a sack of broken glass in the shape of a woman. She knew her edges stuck out at hard, invisible angles, waiting for an unwary hand to snag and recoil, so she kept her eyes closed through the flight to Chicago, immersed in civilian travel-murmur but not part of it."

• At Online Pulps: "A Roman Resurrection" by Lee Meriwether. 1904. Speculative Fiction.
     "Being the strange case H. Quintus Flaccus set against the background of modern Pompeii. A Roman of the time of Nero brought back to life in 1903." from Argosy December, 1904

• At Strange Horizons: "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind (Part 1 of 2)" by Sarah Pinsker. Speculative Fiction.
     "What are you talking about, old man?" she asked, but he was already someplace else. He opened his mouth as if to say more, but no words came out.

• At Tor.com: "The Ministry of Changes" by Marissa K. Lingen. Science Fiction.
      "Fantine was very lucky to have a job in the Ministry of Changes. She had heard her mother tell it to the grannies on their block too many times to forget it, and the things the grannies knew were transmuted to truth by some alchemy unknown even to the Ministry."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "An Incident at Agate Beach" by Marly Youmans.
      "Marsha had jumped when the child materialized at her side, peering over her arm to see what it was she was doing, and she glanced about to look for his parents.  But no one leaned from the cliff or climbed slowly down the path; no one was in sight along the beach in either direction, neither strolling along the rock pools nor bent to see what agates and jasper the tide had uncovered."

Flash Fiction

• At Nature: "The ostracons of Europa" by Ken Hinckley. Science Fiction.
• At Strange Horizons: "Wolf Daughter" by Sara Norja. Speculative Poetry.

Audio Fiction
• At Author's Site: "The MVP Episode #38 (final episode!)" by Scott Sigler. Science Fiction. Football.
      "all great stories must come to a close, and The MVP is no exception. What's in store for Quentin and the Krakens as we finish up Book IV and prepare for Book V. Listen in to find out."

• At LibriVox: The Gods of Mars version 3  by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Science Fiction. Adventure.
     "After John Carter's arrival, a boat of Green Martians on the River Iss are ambushed by the previously unknown Plant Men. The lone survivor is his friend Tars Tarkas, the Jeddak of Thark, who has taken the pilgrimage to the Valley Dor to find Carter."

• At LibriVox: Short Science Fiction Collection 048. Science Fiction.

• "All Cats Are Gray" by Andrew North – 00:17:21
• "The Anglers of Arz" by Roger D. Aycock – 00:22:09
  
• "Vital Ingredient" by Charles De Vet – 00:19:03
• "The Asses of Balaam" by Gordon Randall Garrett – 00:57:52
  
• "Cat and Mouse" by Ralph Williams – 00:59:41
  
• "Do Unto Others" by Mark Clifton – 00:56:08
  
• "Egocentric Orbit" by John Cory – 00:06:08
  
• "Hall of Mirrors" by Fredric Brown – 00:17:57
  
• "Hall of Mirrors" by Fredric Brown – 00:21:15
  
• "In the Abyss" by H.G. Wells – 00:36:09
  
• "Keep Out" by Frederic Brown – 00:08:08
  
• "The Last Supper" by T.D. Hamm – 00:03:34
  
• "Lighter Than You Think" by Nelson Bond – 00:27:48
  
• "Lost In Translation" by Larry M. Harris – 00:28:25
  
• "Of Time and Texas" by William F. Nolan – 00:04:26
  
• "Operation Earthworm" by Joe Archibald – 00:35:31
  
• "Question of Comfort" by Les Collins – 00:54:09
  
• "The Land Ironclads" by H.G. Wells – 00:53:04
  
• "Think Yourself to Death" by C.H. Thames – 00:49:49
  
• "The Unwilling Professor" by Arthur Porges – 00:19:00

• At LibriVox: "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Fantasy. In Short Poetry Collection 121.
      Arthurian Fantasy.

• At Lightspeed: "Division of Labor"by Benjamin Roy Lambert. Science Fiction.
      Described Above.

• At Nightmare Magazine: "And Yet, Her Eyes" by Brit Mandelo. Horror.
      Described Above. 

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "The Street that Wasn't There" by Clifford J. Simak and Carl Jacobi. Science Fiction.
     "Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we know to be our own."
 
• At Strange Horizons: "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind (Part 1 of 2)" by Sarah Pinsker. Speculative Fiction.
     Described above.

Other Genres
• At Online Pulps:  "Miss Dynamite" by Peter Dawson (1941), "Casque of Death" by Clifford D. Clevenger (1939), "Little Old Lady" by Owen Fox Jerome (1944), "Suicide Scenario" by Robert Leslie Bellem (1948).  Noir. Detective. Mystery.