E-Zines and More Free Genre Fiction.

More great freebies, including three fantastic e-zines, plus great fiction and flash fiction.  Even more to come, although it will likely not be finished tonight.  QD radio will resume tomorrow, beginning a long run great Science Fiction OTR.



[Art from Apex Magazine]






Fiction
• At Anotherealm: "The Commoner and the Queen" by Barton Paul Levenson.
     "The Hive. Living like an insect. Tell me George, and please answer me honestly--are you sleeping with those creatures?"

• At GigaNotoSaurus: "Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree" by Christopher Reynaga.
      "This is not about stitching a straight line through cloth like a seamstress. Not about the tight suture of a surgeon closing a wound. This is an art. This is about interweaving patterns of the fold and musk. An intricate lacework of innocence. Each tailor creates his own signature stitch unlike any other."

• Now Posted: Apex Issue 44 — January 2013

"Trixie and the Pandas of Dread” by Eugie Foster
      "Trixie got out of her cherry-red godmobile and waved away the flitting cherubim waiting to bear her to her sedan chair. She wasn’t in the mood for a reverent chorus of hosannas, and the sedan chair desperately needed re-springing. She felt every jostle and jounce from those damned pandas. A day didn’t pass that she didn’t regret adopting giant pandas as her sacred vahanas"
“The Performance Artist” by Lettie Prell
       "On the first day, she sits there wearing a black dress that is neither provocative nor sexless. Yet visitors who flock in from the cold January streets and ascend to the atrium on MoMA’s second floor are mesmerized, for the entire space is awash in a video installation depicting various interactions between machines and flesh. The footage flashes across the walls and sweeps over the woman sitting in the chair"
“The Patrician” by Tansy Rayner Roberts
     "Clea Majora walked through the hot streets of Nova Ostia, her sandalled feet lightly treading on the wide, baked, paving stones. She bought a honey cake from a pastry stall and nibbled it as she walked, using the vine leaf wrapper to catch the crumbs."

• Now Posted: Clarkesworld: Issue 76, January 2013

"Driftings" by Ian McDonald.

     "A hat, a deer and a plastic truck came in on the swell of the ocean. The hat was a yellow hard-hat; an engineer’s, a construction worker’s hat. Its foam inserts had buoyed it across wide waters. The deer was a Puchie Baby miniature with a skull-and-crossbones patterned hide. Adorable, small. The truck was really a tiger-design kid’s trunki, but the wheels still turned, after so long in the gyre."

"Variations on Bluebeard and Dalton’s Law Along the Event Horizon" by Helena Bell. 

      "When I am told well, the shade of my husband’s beard is a word for longing. A robin’s egg, deep water below the coral reef, the night sky against the glow of a dying flashlight. A fooling color so I will not know his plans for me until the first door is opened and my neck is sliced: the thin edge like fresh cut paper." 

Effigy Nights" by Yoon Ha Lee. 

      "The city lies at the galaxy’s dust-stranded edge, enfolding a moon that used to be a world, or a world that used to be a moon; no one is certain anymore. In the mornings its skies are radiant with clouds like the plumage of a bird ever-rising, and in the evenings the stars scatter light across skies stitched and unstitched by the comings and goings of fire-winged starships. Its walls are made of metal the color of undyed silk, and its streets bloom with aleatory lights, small solemn symphonies, the occasional duel."

• At Interstellar Fiction:

"The Great Equalizer" by Jakob Drud. Science Fiction.
     "Despite the powder on my face, despite the Xanax, I start sweating as soon as I leave the broadcast truck to enter the Istanbul Tower Hotel. The lobby with all its marble and air conditioning does nothing to relieve me of my anxiety, and the concierge, privy to the arrangements, is a mirror of my emotions."
"The Rogue" by Jennifer R. Povey. Science Fiction.
     "Shayna finished pulling on her outer suit. As it synced with the nanomachines in her blood and nervous system, she felt the suit become a part of herself. Felt the air against it, where soon there would be only vacuum."
"Tread Lightly" by Alex Hernandez. Science Fiction.
      "Isabella Cavalo watched as the wokchoi burst out of the shrubbery and raced toward the archeological team studying the Crystalline Temple; their pounding hooves kicking up a flurry of ice and dirt. The attack was brutal. The six-limbed creatures, wielding ritual quartz spears and blasters, swept over the unsuspecting human excavators and the wokchoi academics with righteous cruelty."
"Solo" by Nathaniel Katz. Science Fiction.
     "The alien might have nodded; I could never tell what Urosili were doing under their mechanized suits. The uncovered bits were just clumps of fur, and I always wondered if there was anything but more hair inside."

Flash Fiction

• At Every Day Fiction: "Worm Hole" by Justin N Davies. Surreal.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Inheritors" by Desmond Hussey. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The View From Here" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.
• At Yesteryear Fiction: "Timer" by Lucy Montague Moffatt. Fantasy.

Audio Fiction
• At Clarkesworld: """Driftings" by Ian McDonald.

Other Genres
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "The Fresh Start" by Von Rupert.

Tuesday Part Two - Free Fiction

Not to worry, despite appearances, QuasarDragon has not turned into a blog about nature documentaries (Although I do love to watch them). "Just" some really good fiction today by big name authors (Rusch, Bear, McDonald, etc.) and future big name authors.

The illustration is for "Recording Angel" by Ian McDonald.







Now Posted: The Chiaroscuro Volume 47, Week 13 (June 27—30, 2011)
"The Consumer" by Seth Lindberg.

"The other night armed men woke me up to sell me toothpaste. I thought it was a dream at first, until I felt the cold metal against my warm sleeping body. “Who are you?” I asked."

"Conventions of the Genre" by Jesse Bullington.

"“Silver seems to stop them just fine,” I remind him, funnelling the carefully measured metal pellets into the mouth of a yawning 12-gauge shell."

"The Eight of Swords" by S. Boyd Taylor.

"You walk alone in your father’s labyrinth. Through the craze of brambles and glossy-leafed hedges. At the centre a circle of swords stands where the arbour should be. Eight scimitars stabbed deep into a pile of bright roses."

"Growing Out of It" by Mehitobel Wilson.

"“Thirty,” Meg said again. “It’s artificial. Fake, faux, and fulla shit. No such thing—not on your birthday, anyway. When you turn thirty, you’re actually finishing your thirtieth year outside the womb."

"The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe" by Elizabeth Bear.

"The shark is a shark. A Great White, Carcharodon carcharias, the sublime killer. It is a blind evolutionary shot-in-the-dark, a primitive entity unchanged except in detail for―by the time of our narrative―billions of years."

"Patterns in White Static" by David Niall Wilson.

"Once the rooms were dark and the soft, endless music flowed from room to room across the banks of surround-sound speakers I had installed, it was as if I was the only man in a very silent, very empty universe, seated at its centre in blissful peace."

"Salvation on the Tongues of Djinn" by A. M. Muffaz.

"There was a boy once I thought was beautiful. I thought he was beautiful and somebody saw. That was all it was. You become polluted just by talking to boys alone, and no amount of praying and fasting will rub that stain away, even though Father says I should pray and fast as I have always done."

"Sour Metal" by Amber Van Dyk.

"Pennies. I carry them in my pockets, in my purse, in the space between my stocking and my heel. My pennies are dirty like all good money, and in the dark I roll them in my palms, cover their copper in the oil of my fingerprints and savour the taste of metal on my tongue."

"You Must Remember This" by Gary A. Braunbeck.

"“The big deal,” he said, “is that I remember the way my folks argued about the colour. Dad wanted green, but Mom insisted on light blue, and like every other time they had an argument, Mom won out.”"

@Author's Site: "The Poop Thief" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (2008). Fantasy.

"Portia Meadows runs one of the few pet stores in the entire world that sells familiars to the magical. Familiars—delicate, moody creatures that they are—keep magic clean and pure. To lose a familiar means losing magic. And on a bright afternoon, Portia’s assistance discovers that something essential has disappeared, threatening not just the magical within the store, but in the entire world."

@Lightspeed: "Recording Angel" by Ian McDonald. Science Fiction.

"“I don’t do gossip,” she had told T. P. Costello, SkyNet’s Nairobi station chief when he told her of the international celebrities who were coming to the death-party of the famous Treehouse Hotel."

@Daily Science Fiction: "His Brother was an Only Child" by Ronald D Ferguson.

"I do not know how long I struggled with groggy consciousness, but finally I reached a point where I managed to stay alert through the day. That night, I slept extremely well, and awoke refreshed the following morning."

@Storytime: "How Nnedi Got Her Curved Spine" by Nnedi Okorafor. Fable.

"In a forest of South Eastern Nigeria lived a tribe of large baboons called The Idiok. They were regal creatures with thick brown fur, black ears, careful hands and golden eyes. They were wise and peaceful, and at night, when the moon was high and full, they could easily find each other because their eyes would glow like setting suns. They were a beautiful people."

@Electric Velocipede: "Enmity" by K. Tempest Bradford. [Via SF Signal]

"She is running, has been running for some time. Running from Ariastus? No, running from the serpent she knows is at her heel, ready to strike, waiting for an excuse. So she runs. She runs through the tall grass, through the canopied forest, through the fields of flowers. Running to the music, to Orpheus, away from the serpent, though even now she knows they are the same."