It's The Almost Weekend Freebies List

More free goodies linked, including text fiction, flash fiction, audio fiction, and an RPG module by QuasarDagon. The last being a pay what you want offering (Yes, $0 is ok.)

Still having technical difficulties, but I'll be back soon.










Fiction
• At Nightmare: "Old Friends" by Charles L. Grant. Horror.
"David told himself there was nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all. It was, of course, only the delicious sense of anticipation he was feeling and not the fear that he could be mistaken. No. After all these years, all that pain, all that twisting of what he thought he knew . . . mistaken."

• At Paizo: "Armored" Chapters One and Two by Stephanie Lorée.Fantasy.
"The tip of her longsword carved a channel along the beachhead of Lake Encarthan. She dragged the weapon, held it listlessly in her hand. Hers were dark, dirtied hands that knew the weight of good steel, the heft of a man's heart. She remembered a time when she was clean, though she could not recall the feeling of pristine boot soles, nor of a soul unstained."

• At Tor.com: "As Good As New" by Charlie Jane Anders. Science Fiction.
"The panic room had pretty much every TV show ever made on its massive hard drive, with multiple backup systems and a fail-proof generator, so there was nothing stopping Marisol from marathoning The Facts of Life for sixteen hours a day, starting over again with season one when she got to the end of the bedraggled final season."

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Five Days to a Better You with Parallel Worlds (Executive Edition)" by Erica L. Satifka. Science Fiction.
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Man in the Bottle" by JD DeHart. Science Fiction.
• At Nature: "The Tiger Waiting on the Shore" by Paul Currion.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Luminaris" by Duncan Shields. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Pay the Piper" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Clarkesworld: "Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points” by JY Yang and read by Kate Baker.
"Our mother is dead, murdered, blood seared and flesh rendered, her blackened bones lying in a yellow bag on a steel mortuary table somewhere we don’t know. The Right will not tell. After the flames and radiation had freed the sports stadium from their embrace, the Right were the first on the disaster scene, and it was their ambulances that took the remains away to some Central hospital that the Left has no access to."

• At Forgotten Classics: "The People of the Mist, chapters 38-39" by H. Rider Haggard.
No description.

• At StarShipSofa: "No 353 Kathryn Cramer"
“Disextinction, Inc.” by Kathryn Cramer and “You, In Emulation” by Kathryn Cramer
“I checked you out of the library. You were due back in two weeks for synchronization, but I kept you out much longer, running up huge fines. The librarian was very nice and didn’t make me pay right away, but said that she had very little discretion; that the fines were set by the library system and your publisher.”

Gaming
• At DriveThruRPG:  PO-1 The Stolen Child. Fantasy. Pay what you want.
"The pleasant town of Sligo has its tranquility shattered when a young boy vanishes in the middle of the night. Investigating the disappearance, the characters discover lost ruins and an ancient plot for revenge and a long forgotten enemy of humanity. Will the characters be able to rescue the stolen child or will a cruel, wronged race be able to wreak vengeance on all humanity? An OSR compatible module for any old school RPG or modern clone, designed for character levels 7-9, The Stolen Child is easily adaptable to other levels."

Circle of Free Fiction

From the day we arrive on the planet / And blinking, step into the sun / There's more to read than can ever be read / More to download than can ever be done

Fiction

• At Online Pulps!: "The Cat-Snake" by Frances M. Deegan. Horror.
"The cat in Isabel loved to be petted - but the snake in her was poised to strike ..." first published in Fantastic Adventures, April 1948. Direct pdf download here.

• At Project Gutenberg: "The Fantasy Fan - November 1933" by Charles D. Hornig.
Includes "The Other Gods" by H. P. Lovecraft and "A Dream of the Abyss" by Clark Ashton Smith.

• At Project Gutenberg: "The Fantasy Fan December 1933" by Charles D. Hornig.
Includes "Birkett's Twelfth Corpse" by August W. Derleth and other flash fiction.

Flash Fiction

• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Argument" by Suzanne Borchers. Science Fiction.

Audio

• At Clarkesworld: "Bonfires in Anacostia" by Joseph Tomaras, read by Kate Baker.
"On the left-hand side of the coffee table were stacked three Michael Chabon novels, one each by T.C. Boyle and Tim O’Brien, and a volume of Nathanael West’s collected works. On the right were five guides to maximizing fertility, and two novels by Tessa Dare. In between were two stemless wine glasses."

• At Forgotten Classics: "People of the Mist - Chapters 32-33" by H. Rider Haggard. Adventure.
"In which Otter must fight and Leonard is tricked."

• At Pseudopod: "Prince Of Flowers" by Elizabeth Hand, read by Christiana Ellis. Horror.
"As she opened the box, dried flowers, seeds, and wood shavings cascaded into her lap. She inhaled, closing her eyes, and imagined blue water and firelight, sweet-smelling seeds exploding in the embers. She sneezed and opened her eyes to a cloud of dust wafting from the crate like smoke. Very carefully she worked her fingers into the fragrant excelsior, kneading the petals gently until she grasped something brittle and solid. She drew this out in a flurry of dead flowers."





Gaming

• At DriveThruRPG: "Basic Dungeon Tiles : Expansion Set 3" Pay What You Want.
Dungeon tiles are a useful fantasy gaming tool and this "pay what you want" set includes 24 pages of them.

Free Fiction and the Summer Sun

Free Fiction says are here again as the summer evenings grow / I got my fantasy, I got my sci-fi, Have I got a more? Who knows?

Fiction

• At Buzzy Mag: "Cineplex" by M. M. DeVoe. Urban Fantasy.
"When people ask, I say that I’m a physicist who serves on the board of a nonprofit science research agency headquartered in New York. This is true, basically. My area of expertise is parallel universes. At any given moment, I know all the things that ever did or might happen in a given location."

• At Paizo: "Queen Sacrifice - Chapter Three: The City Under No Stars." by Steven Savile. Pathfinder fantasy.
"Spires of stone rose toward what should have been the sky, the twisted columns supporting the overbearing weight of the cavern's roof. Lights burned in a few windows, like tears on the face of the rock walls where the oil burners lit the workplace. She watched as dozens of shadows swarmed over the scaffolds like ants. She knew where the children had gone; they hadn't been slaughtered for food, but were being used as slave labor down here, worked until they dropped, useless. Only then would they become meat for the shadow men." Past chapters here.

• Now Posted: Clarkesworld: Issue 95, August 2014. Fantasy and SF
• "Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion" by Caroline M. Yoachim.
"Ellie huddled in the corner of her daughter’s room. She sang a quiet lullaby and cradled her swaddled infant in her arms. Lexi was four months old, or maybe thirteen months? Ellie shook her head. There hadn’t been a birthday party, and thirteen-month-olds didn’t need swaddling."
• "Bonfires in Anacostia" by Joseph Tomaras.
"On the left-hand side of the coffee table were stacked three Michael Chabon novels, one each by T.C. Boyle and Tim O’Brien, and a volume of Nathanael West’s collected works. On the right were five guides to maximizing fertility, and two novels by Tessa Dare. In between were two stemless wine glasses."
• "The Saint of the Sidewalks" by Kat Howard.
"Joan wrote her prayer with a half-used tube of Chanel Vamp that she had found discarded at the 34th St. subway stop. It glided across the cardboard—the flip side of a Stoli box, torn and bent—and left her words in a glossy slick the color of dried blood: 'I need a miracle.'"
• "The Rose Witch" by James Patrick Kelly.
"Most in that country called Tzigana a witch, though never to her face. Now that she was dead, you would expect that the girls who had lived in her tumbledown house might say whatever they wished. But none dared speak against the old woman. All but one continued to bless her memory, constructing imagined kindnesses out of blankets as thin as soldiers’ socks, candle stubs dipped from scrap wax, and joints of stringy goat for the turnip soup."
• "Seven Years from Home" by Naomi Novi.
"Seven days passed for me on my little raft of a ship as I fled Melida; seven years for the rest of the unaccelerated universe. I hoped to be forgotten, a dusty footnote left at the bottom of a page. Instead I came off to trumpets and medals and legal charges, equal doses of acclaim and venom, and I stumbled bewildered through the brassy noise, led first by one and then by another, while my last opportunity to enter any protest against myself escaped."
• "Nevermore" by Ian R. MacLeod.
"Now that he couldn’t afford to buy enough reality, Gustav had no option but to paint what he saw in his dreams. With no sketchpad to bring back, no palette or cursor, his head rolling up from the pillow and his mouth dry and his jaw aching from the booze he’d drunk the evening before—which was the cheapest means he’d yet found of getting to sleep—he was left with just that one chance, and few trailing wisps of something that might once have been beautiful before he had to face the void of the day."


Flash Fiction
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Dissidence" by Robert King. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Clarkesworld: "Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion" by Caroline M. Yoachim, read by Kate Baker.Science Fiction.
"Ellie huddled in the corner of her daughter’s room. She sang a quiet lullaby and cradled her swaddled infant in her arms. Lexi was four months old, or maybe thirteen months? Ellie shook her head. There hadn’t been a birthday party, and thirteen-month-olds didn’t need swaddling."

• At Pseudopod: "Gut Check" by Toni Nicolino, read by Stephanie Morris. Horror.
“The sun had ducked behind the overgrown trees on Twining Avenue, and she checked the time on her cell phone. She’d been meandering for almost thirty minutes, and if she went any further, she wouldn’t have the energy to trek back. She turned around and started the journey home, feeling strangely fearful of the sudden darkness. The streetlights hadn’t yet been activated and the lack of illumination made her uneasy. She picked up the pace, wondering if her protective new-mother disposition had heightened her sense of self-preservation. More likely, the recollection of her unpleasant childhood had caused the unrest."

• Radio Drama Revival: "Episode 384 – Traveling Back to 1918" Science Fiction.
"Premise: It is 1918 and aliens have crash landed on the planet. At the climax of World War I, Central Power and Allied scientists are racing to find uses for alien technology. Triplanes and Sopwith camels are rigged with laser systems. Believed dead after being shot down, Manfred Von Richtofen, the infamous Red Baron is restored to health as a cybornetic robot and enlisted to aid Germany in it’s quest to fight the return of the aliens."


Gaming

• At DriveThruRPG: "FA3 - Darkwood Forest" OSR Adventure.
"With a multitude of side adventures this area helps mid-level adventurers increase their experience point base. Close to this area is the previously published Sunken Temple of Bulu and the Ruins of Tarlac Keep.This adventure setting was designed for 1st/2nd Edition AD&D for the Filbar Campaign for mid to upper level groups of adventurers.  This adventure is easily adaptable to most any game and system. Save yourself some time and utilize it for several one shot adventures or a continuing campaign setting!"

• At QuasarDragon Games: "The Gumberoo" Monster.
"What a strange creature it was. When I first saw it, I thought it my be a deformed bear, or one that was horribly scarred. That was soon disproved when poor Arteoss decided to chase it off with his slingshot; it seems unlikely that he'll ever regain use of that eye. Who'd have believed that the stone would bounce of the damned beast and rebound straight back at Arteoss." - from The Journals of Eurylochos the Traveler.

August First Free Fiction

 It starts.













Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: " Scents of Life" by Robert Lowell Russell. Science Fiction.
"Katie walked hand in hand with her grandfather along the forest path. Dappled light filtered through the trees. She liked the way his hand felt rough in hers and how his eyes always seemed to smile, even when it didn't show on his face. Whenever she stumbled over a stone, or a root, or her own feet, he'd steady her with a grip that was still firm and strong. He stopped along the trail and pointed to dandelions growing in a sunlit circle among the trees. Yellow petals crowned green stems ending in spiked leaves. Some flowers had already changed to puffs."

• At GigaNotoSaurus: "Between Sea and Shore" by Vanessa Fogg. Science Fiction.
 "The world is filled with spirits who would take a child. The gundarram, who hide in banana trees and send out their foul breath to sicken sleeping infants. The gargar demons with red fur and black wings, who fly through the rainforest looking for naughty children to snatch. Momimo, who appears as a little lost boy crying in the mangrove swamps, begging children and adults alike for help. There are even spirits who steal the lives of babies still in their mothers’ wombs."

• At Kasma: "Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings" by C.J. Paget. Science Fiction.
"There: Thebe. Ugly little thing. A potato of ice and crap, streakin' past like the comet it probably once was. Blink and you missed it. Maybe I feel a tug as it zips by, its mass just enough to stir me in my suspension coffin. Or maybe I'm imagining it. You imagine a lot of things out here. You need to."

• Now Posted: Quantum Muse - August 2014 Edition

• "The Waiting Room" by Harris Tobias. Speculative Fiction.
"Got a question for God, take a number." 
• "Slight Chance of Thunderstorms" by Jessica Baumgartner. Fantasy.
"This local weather girl is much more than meets the eye."
• "The Fortress" by Michele Dutcher. Science Fiction
"In a barren future, a young woman goes searching for a link to her heritage."
• "Cities of Men" by Rocky Hutson. Science Fiction.
"Retired astronomy professor discovers humankind is making a startling transformation."

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Ulder" by Vajra Chandrasekera. Magical Realism.
• At Every Day Fiction: "An Isolated Mechanism" by Moriah Geer-Hardwick. Science Fiction. 
• At Farther Stars Than These: "Orion" by C. C. Parker. Science Fiction. 
• At Nature: "One Out, One In" by Aislinn Batstone, Science Fiction.
• At Quantum Muse: "The Arrival" by Harris Tobias. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Beginning is Impossible and the End is Impassable" by Nathan Witkin. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Wind Chimes" by Sara Norja. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction

• At Clarkesworld:“Gold Mountain” by Chris Roberson, read by Kate Baker. Science Fiction
"Johnston Lien stood at the open door of the tram, one elbow crooked around a guardrail, her blue eyes squinting in the morning glare at the sky-piercing needle of the orbital elevator to the south. The sun was in the Cold Dew position, early in the dog-month, when the temperature began to soar and the sunlight burned brighter in the southern sky. Summer was not long off, and Lien hoped to be far from here before it came. As the tram rumbled across the city of Nine Dragons, she turned her attention back to her notes, checking the address of her last interviewee and reviewing the pertinent bits of data from their brief earlier meeting."

• At Classic Tales Podcast: "MS Found In A Bottle" by Edgar Allan Poe, read by B.J. Harrison.
"After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18-- , from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger --having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me like a fiend."

• At Decoder Ring Theatre:  "Red Panda Adventures (108) - The Gadget"
"A new world is about to be born.But before it can be born... something will have to die, at the hands of The Gadget"

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 20 - Tarzan The Untamed" Adventure.
"We left Tarzan seeking an entrance to the mysterious city of madmen, tracking Bertha Kircher and Lt. Smith-Oldwick.  As he races toward the city wall hoping to climb the vines that grow on it, he is hunted and chased by one of the huge valley lions!"










Gaming

• At DriveThruRPG: "Frontier Explorer - Issue 9" Star Frontiers.
"Issue 9 is now available for download.  This issue is all about spaceships.  We have a couple of awesome deck plan by Joseph Meager that we rescued from a lost Star Frontiers site.  Plus submissions from some regular contributiors and a cargo ship by a new author, M. Derryberry.  In all, there are three sets of deck plans, a writeup on a fourth class of ships, some space stations, and a review of early atomic rockets."

• At RPGNow: "The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children" Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Pay What You Want.
"Not to worry though—they are freaky crystal-headed children. Inhuman RPG cannon-fodder. ‘Monsters.’ So it’s okay. They deserve it. So you can have fun carving them up. Right?"

Monday Free Fiction Blues

You know how much I love posting daily free fiction links, but I've got free fiction to read, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I'm swamped.


Fiction

• At Mad Scientist Journal: "The Front Line" by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley. Science Fiction.
"Stand right up here with me and take a look around. This is the front line. No, that is not a euphemism. War’s not normally neat with straight lines and easy-to-understand strategies but here, we have a line. It’s that trench right there. Don’t get too close to the edge."

• At The WiFiles: "The Creeping Complacency" by Jamie Lackey. Speculative Fiction.
"Jeff laughed. Gwen hadn’t realized how much she’d missed that sound. He pressed a plate of French toast into her hands. 'Here, sleepyhead. Eat up while it’s still warm.'"

Flash Fiction

• At Every Day Fiction: "Alien Alley" by JR Hume, read by Alexander Jones. Science Fiction. Audio.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Cravings" by Todd Thorne. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Dinner Bell" by Duncan Shields. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Relayer" by Ian Hill. Science Fiction.
• At Toasted Cake: "The Fez Shackle" by Dale Ivan Smith. Audio. Speculative Fiction.

Audio Fiction

• At Cast of Wonders: "Episode 130: The Phobos Monolith" by Preston Dennett. YA Science Fiction.
"True to her nature, Vasia ran without fear or caution across the Martian landscape. She leaped in huge graceful arcs that any dancer would envy. Naira did her best to keep up, but because of legs, and she quickly fell behind. How she wished she could rid herself of the cursed robo-walker that encased her legs so she could run like Vasia. Her sister’s body was strong and healthy. Naira, unfortunately, wasn’t as lucky. It was a miracle that their parents had even let them outside, considering how protective they were."

• At Escape Pod: "EP456: To Waste" by Luke Pebler, read by Joshua Price. Science Fiction.
"When the machine beeps, it has produced almost eight ounces of clean warm water.  I sip some of it, just enough to wet my mouth, and put the rest into a second machine."

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 19 of Tarzan the Untamed" Adventure.
"Chapter XIX – The Queen’s StoryBertha Kircher and lt. Smith-Oldwick have been captured and brought to the city of the maniacs – or so they act. The two have been separated – with Snith-Oldwick being led off while Bertha Kircher is escorted to another part of the palace."









Gaming

• At DriveThruRPG: "The Last Princess" by GagMen Productions.
"Deep in the jungle lies the ruins of the ancient civilization of the Ditani, now overrun with arachno-apes and other jungle savages. Our heroes are hired by the great explorer Raeyon, the lady Ipeneth and their team to help them find and capture the legendary Gyanki’don, a massive arachno-ape rumored to protect the natives from harm." Basic Fantasy Rules compatible.

• At DriveThruRPG:Be Awesome At Dungeon Design by Raging Swan Press.
"Any GM can design a basic dungeon. A dedicated GM takes the extra time to craft exciting, logical and challenging dungeons that are so much more than a series of rooms stuffed full of monsters and treasure. Be Awesome At Dungeon Design comprises eight dungeon design essays by ENnie Award winning designer Creighton Broadhurst.  Handling such subjects as a dungeon’s purpose, design, ecology, dressing and physicality Be Awesome At Dungeon Design also includes essays on alternate dungeons and the principles of megadungeon design."

A Day Late and Free Fiction Short

Busy weekend so just a few this time but there should be a bigger selection tomorrow. Like the classical music fan said while picking his Halloween costume "Ill be Bach!"

Flash Fiction
• At Every Day Fiction: "A Man Who Talked to Fish" by Teddy Kimathi. Surreal.
• At 365 Tomorrow: "Picking Isometric Cotton" by E.S. Wynn. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction

• At Pseudopod: "Pseudopod 396: The Buchenwald Man" by Benjamin Sonnenberg. Horror.
"It was a girl, about seventeen. It was a little difficult to tell, however, because her face had caved in quite badly. A few broken shards of teeth were lodged in her forehead, and both eye sockets were empty. Dust caked up inside the holes. The girl had been a blonde, and her hair was still tied into a fishtail. As they pulled it out, the body twisted and flopped loosely, allowing some of the dust and gravel to spill out of the eye sockets.Stan did not shudder at this, and was surprised to see the same reaction in the others. Had he really thought he was alone in this chill? No, he was different from the others. They all had been inside the camp; this was nothing. They had seen ten-year-olds, even babies,piled in heaps like charcoal. This was nothing.”"

• At Radio Drama Revival: "Getting the Prophets Back - Part 2 of 2"
"When Karl gives up his appointed quest to chase after the Muffin Girl from the local coffee shop, three prophets, Zoe, Morgan, and Destin team up with a six-foot silverfish named Bob (Jerry Hudson) and find themselves on a real quest in which a prophet-turned-hero is allied with a villain-turned-mentor to defeat a prophet-turned-villain to save their society from its own absurd facades."



Gaming

• At QuasarDragon Games, a new OSR monster, The Calydonian Boar.
"Swift as the word, she sped the boar away, / With charge on those devoted fields to prey. / No larger bulls th' Aegyptian pastures feed, / And none so large Sicilian meadows breed." Ovid - Metamorphoses.

Dawn of the Planet of Free Fiction

Instead of just monkeying around (lose 1d6 sanity if you get the obvious pun), try out these great freebies.

Fiction
• Now Posted: Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #152 — Jul. 24, 2014. Fantasy.
• "The Topaz Marquise" by Fran Wilde.
"Her words made no sense, but neither did the lost hours. I shivered in the warmth of the day. Beyond the window, in the square, I saw a familiar figure in a tattered cloak. Even from a floor up, the smell that greeted me was unpleasant: unwashed hair, perhaps rotting leather. Suddenly, I wanted to escape from my studio and the chill that hung over it."
• "What Needs to Burn" by Sylvia Anna Hiven.
"When I woke, I found the bullet between my wound and the makeshift bandage. The flesh was already closing where my body had spit it out. I pulled off the bandage and cursed a colorful tirade at Shadow, although I knew it wasn't his fault. People with the magic can't help it sometimes. Things just happen around them, though they might not want it to."

Flash Fiction
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Wishmas" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Fantasy.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Leaving Rhonda for Mars" by Wilma Bernard. Science Fiction.
• At Farther Stars Than These: "UFO" by Alfonso Colasuonno. Science Fiction.
• At Nature: "A Long Way From Home" by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Emotional" by Steve Smith.Science Fiction.


Audio Fiction

• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "One Ear Back" by Tina Connolly
"Introduced by the author, explaining how the story was inspired by an Icelandic folk tale, and what it might be like to be in that folk-tale character’s unusual situation, as well as one particularly expressive cat.

The shadows between the trees were dark and I stood between two birches, sniffing out the right way. My tail was high. This was no headless mouse. This would impress Ingy."

• At Clarkesworld: "The Halfway House at the Heart of Darkness" by William Browning Spencer, read by Kate Baker.
"Keel wore a ragged shirt with the holo Veed There, Simmed That shimmering on it. She wore it in and out of the virtual. If she was in an interactive virtual, the other players sometimes complained. Amid the dragons and elves and swords of fire, a bramble-haired girl, obviously spiking her virtual with drugs and refusing to tune her shirt to something suitably medieval, could be distracting"







Gaming

• At  DriveThruRPG: Dark Horrors Hidden Places by Dave Valderhaug. "Pay what you want"
"DHHP is a dark gothic horror system with simple rules for quick play.Included is the adventure "The purge of Portland road." . . . "The world is shattered. Where once stood streets and entire cities now lies rubble. The sadistic among the population have taken to the underground in order to torture and torment the poor and weak. Strange creatures spill forth onto the streets of towns and cities, as the governments struggle to keep these monstrosities a secret."

There's a Starman Waiting in the Sky / He'd Like to Read Free Fiction / But He Thinks It'd Blow Our Minds

E-tons of great stuff today!

Fiction

• At HiLobrow: "King Goshawk Part 30" by Eimar O'Duffy. Science Fiction. Satire.1926.
"First the mythical Irish hero Cúchulainn, then his son Cuanduine, travel to Earth in order to combat the king capitalists. Thirty-five years before the hero of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, these well-meaning aliens discover that cultural forms and norms are the most effective barrier to social or economic revolution."

• At Nightmare Magazine: "The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair" by Tom Piccirilli. Horror.
"Fate arrives disguised as choice. As if you could actually say, Screw this, I’m out of here, or just get down on your knees like everybody else. But John’s got to shrug and go, 'Hmmm.'"

• Now Posted: Scigentasy #6. Fantasy. Science Fiction.

• "The Hoof Situation" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam.
 " My hooves came. Yesterday my feet cracked, and this morning they are beautiful hooves, with gold fur atop them. I stretch and wiggle them under the quilt my grandma sewed me. It’s time now for me to sew my granddaughter’s quilt. Behooved, it’ll be the only thing I’m capable of, confined to bed and the rocking chair, confined to wherever my daughter and granddaughter carry me."
•  "This Shall Serve as a Demarcation" by Bogi Takács.
"I sit up on the futon and pull up one sleeve to examine my arm – lighter-toned in branching lines like the bare, defoliated frames of trees in winter. I used to be cut along those pathways, gleaming metal and shapeforming plastic set into flesh, embedded to remain inside – a part of me forevermore."

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Earth's Destruction: A Crowdfunding Campaign" by Nicky Drayden, Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Child of Earth" by Cesium. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction

• At Author's Site: "Nocturnal: Episode #39" by Scott Sigler.  Paranormal Thriller.
"Rex Deprovdechuk claims to be the king of Marie’s Children, but to cement his rule, he must become one with the Queen. Aggie James finally escaped the White Dungeon, but he didn’t get far. Now he comes face to face with new threats: Bryan Clauser and Pookie Chang. Amy Zou has returned home to her family — what will she do to keep her twin daughters alive?" All earlier chapters here.

• At Drabblecast: "Mister Bob" by Dan Campbell.  Comedy. Strange.
"Miss Sanderson reached out and tapped the translation device on the table, then picked it up and fiddled with its settings. She was the ugliest female of her species I’d ever seen– obscenely symmetrical features, pale hair and complexion, long limbs–and yet forever twirling a finger in her hair like she was trying to proposition me."

• At Forgotten Classics: "Episode 260: The People of the Mist, chapters 30-31" by H. R. Haggard. Adventure. 
"In which Soa surprises Leonard, the lovers surprise each other, and Otter is not surprised at all."







 

• At PodCastle: "PodCastle 321: Paya Nak" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew, read by Nina Shaharuddin. Fantasy.
"There is a thing in the cradle I rock, a lump of flesh, stained in my fluids. This is what killed me. A parasite that took all my food, stole all my breaths, until one day I woke up to find my heart stopped."

• At SFFaudio: "Podcast #274 – Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn And His Family" by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Gildart Jackson. Horror.
 "Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species--if separate species we be--for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world."

  

• At StarShipSofa: "StarShipSofa No 347 The Region of Jennifer” by Tony Ballantyne, read by Trendane Sparks.
"The region of Jennifer extended to about thirty kilometres. Out there, amongst thedecaying factory belt, daffodils pushed their heads through the tired earth of the canal banks.The Steam Barons may have lost their power, but the world still bore their scars.  Even so, Jennifer was at work to make things beautiful."







Gaming

• At Dragonsfoot: "The Forbidden Land" by RC Pinnell.
"This is a world in which characters cans pring into being, spend a lifetime exploring, and eventually retire;unless they die prematurely.Even then,magic can sometimes overcome an early demise.It is intended for both seasoned and novice players.There is no restriction on the level of characters to be used with this product. Each suggested mini-scenario within has parameters regarding character levels, and you should set your own as well when designing your own encounters to place within the world. Beginning and low-level groups can certainly undertake to explore the wilderness within this product, but they should be advised that doing so will likely have a lethal outcome."