Free Fiction Has Broken, Like the First Morning.

Some good free fiction to start the day, including audio horror from Pseudopod and new fiction from Tor and Crossed Genres.  A couple links were swiped from the honorable Regan Wolfrom of SF Signal.  E-books and more when I return.


[Art from  "In The Abyss" in audio fiction below]






Fiction
• At Tor.com: "Rocket Ship to Hell" by Jeffrey Ford. Science Fiction.
      "Twelve years ago, I was at the Millennium Worldcon in Philly, and with the exception of the incident I’m about to relate, I only remember three other things about that long weekend."

Now Posted: Crossed Genres Magazine -  Issue 7: Expectations (July 2013)

 • "The Parched Lands" by N.A. Ratnayake
     "When the bell rang at the end of class, Amanthi was crashing from a dopamine high. She raised her slight, brown hand as her thin body shook, and when her arm brushed against her long, black hair she felt the slick dampness of sweat."
• "As Large as Alone" by Alena McNamara
     "As the boat slowed, Julia watched the girl on the public raft. She wasn’t pretty, in the normal way, but her whole body inclined toward a secret hinted at in the curve of her fingers toward her knee and the way she raised her head, half self-conscious."
• "The God-Seed" by Claire Humphrey
      "Walking up Genesee Road in the country dark, I thought I was seeing the northern lights. Rose-coloured streaks, twisting upward, half-obscured stars on the far side. I stopped and threw my head back to look. Then I smelled smoke and I knew."

• Flash Fiction at Garbled Transmissions: "Elmer" by Eric Thomas. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Pseudopod: "Magdala Amygdala" by Lucy Snyder. Horror.
     "I have excellent health insurance. There’s no bliss for me. What I and every other upstanding, gainfully-employed, fully-covered Type Three citizen gets is an allotment of refrigerated capsules containing an unappetizing grey paste. Mostly it’s cow brains and antioxidant vitamins with just the barest hint of pureed cadaver white matter. It’s enough to keep your skin and brains from ulcerating. It’s enough to keep your nose from rotting off. It’s enough to help you think clearly enough to function at your average white-collar job."

• At SFFaudio: "In The Abyss" by H.G. Wells. Science Fiction. Horror.
     "Two large and protruding eyes projected from sockets in chameleon fashion, and it had a broad reptilian mouth with horny lips beneath its little nostrils. In the position of the ears were two huge gill-covers, and out of these floated a branching tree of coralline filaments, almost like the tree-like gills that very young rays and sharks possess. But the humanity of the face was not the most extraordinary thing about the creature."

Other Genres
• Audio at CraftLit: Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence, chapters 7–8
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "You Ain't the Only Catfish" by Walt Giersbach.
• Pulp Fiction at Online Pulps:

• "No Favors Asked" by B. E. Cook. 1946.
• "The Baron Makes a Photo Finish" by Curtiss T. Gardner. 1944. Noir.
• "A Little Psychology" by Arnold Grant. 1951. Noir.