There's Always Room For More Free Fiction

Another day of good free fiction and there's more to come.  Get 'em while they're fresh.





 [Art for "Mother of Toads" in Audio Fiction]




Fiction
• At Author's Site: "Coin of the Realm" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Fantasy.
     "Rosalind, a princess of Orsem, believes the kingdom values her less than a coin of the realm. Her father the King confirms her belief when he decides to marry her to a prince from a neighboring kingdom, despite the threats of assassination that pour in."

• At The Colored Lens: "Illuminate: A History and a Future" by Sadie Mattox. Science Fiction.
     "This is the only shot I’m going to be in. It’s me against the wide blue sky of Idaho, standing along a strip of highway outside Boise. I spent two days waiting for the right weather and the right light. The road bends behind me, the yellow stripes recently painted and bright on the asphalt. Every few feet a stubby pine tree pokes up out of the long grass."

• At Strange Horizons: "Count Poniatowski and the Beautiful Chicken" by Elizabeth Ziemska
       "Before I tell you the story he told me about his encounter with Count Stanislas August Poniatowski, the last King of Poland, I need to explain a thing or two about my father."

Flash Fiction

• At Beware the Hairy Mango: "Nuts Aur Us" Audio Weird.
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Breaking Orbit" by Rachael Acks. Modern Fantasy.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Schrodinger’s Spat" by Peter Wood. Science Fiction.
• At Strange Horizons: "A Modern Prometheus" by Lynette Mejía. Poem

E-Books
• At Amazon: Zombie, Inc. by Christine Dougherty. Zombies. [Via Pixel-of-Ink]
At Free eBooks Daily:

• Night Before Doomsday by Linda Nightingale. Fantasy. Romance. 
• Surveillance by Aaron Pogue. Science Fiction Thriller.
• Hallowed by Monica Leonelle. YA Urban Fantasy.
• Sweet Oblivion by Bailey Ardisone. Paranormal.
• Helga: Out of Hedgelands by Rick Johnson. YA Fantasy.
• Strays by Matthew Krause. Dark Fantasy.
• Crossline by Russ Colchamiro. Science Fiction. Space Opera.
• A Whisper in the Dark by TD Bauer. Paranormal Mystery.

Audio Fiction
• At Author's Site: "Chuckles Mulrooney, Pt. 2" by Scott Sigler. Horror.
     "The second half of the short story about deals with the devil, horror writing, clowns and seedy deeds done in the soup aisle of a Meijer grocery store."

• At Clarkesworld: "The Dust Assassin" by Ian McDonald. Science Fiction.
     "You never think your life is special. Your life is just your life, your world is just your world, even lived in a Rajput Palace defended by machine monkeys against an implacable rival family. Even when you are a weapon."

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "The Draw" by Jerome Bixby. Science Fiction.
     "Stories of the old West were filled with bad men who lived by the speed of their gun hand. Well, meet Buck Tarrant, who could outdraw them all. His secret: he didn't even have to reach for his weapon...."

• At Protecting Project Pulp: "Mother of Toads" by Clark Ashton Smith. Horror.
     "The voice of Mère Antoinette, the witch, was an amorous croaking. She ogled Pierre, the apothecary’s young apprentice, with eyes full-orbed and unblinking as those of a toad."

• At Strange Horizons: "Count Poniatowski and the Beautiful Chicken" by Elizabeth Ziemska
       "Before I tell you the story he told me about his encounter with Count Stanislas August Poniatowski, the last King of Poland, I need to explain a thing or two about my father."

SF Double Feature, Free Fiction, and Free Comics

Lt. Bob here. Today, as usual for a Sunday, we have some very entertaining comics (Some humans die, and that's always entertaining) and Mooooooviiiesss. Two classic Sci-fi films. Also some free fiction, much of it via SF Signal (A good site! That John DeNardo is one human who has his act together, unlike lazy, sleep-all-weekend Space Captain.)





Mooooooviiiesss.
Purple Death From Outer Space.Feature Length complication movie of the 1940 "Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe" Cliffhanger Serial.




Night of the Blood Beast (1958). Classic low budget sci-fi complete with a reanimated dead astronaut impregnated with alien embryos and a blood-sucking space monster produced by Gene Corman


Fiction
The Spring-Summer 2011 issue of FLURB is out with
Kek-W - Big Store Baoding
Leslie What - My Big Night Out With Thing
Alberto Chimal - Hotels Hoteles
Chris N. Brown - Medusa
Minister Faust - The Ghosts of Carnivores
Charlie Jane Anders - Fairy Werewolf vs. Vampire Zombie
Robert Guffey - Bring Me the Head of André Breton!
Bef, or, Bernardo Fernández - The Last Hours of the Last Days
Las Últimas Horas De Los Últimos Días
Pepe Rojo - Stuff Cosas
Michael Swanwick - Cold Reading
Rudy Rucker - Dispatches From Interzone
Doug Lain - The Last Apollo Mission
[Via SF Signal]


@The Author's Website: "Heroes are Forever" by Heather Massey.
"Two lovers find their lives forever changed as technology and Fate collide in this near-future science fiction romance short." [Via SF Signal]

@The Author's Website: "When I Kissed the Learned Astronomer" by Jamie Todd Rubin.
"When I kissed the learned astronomer, I never expected to fall in love, discover intelligent alien life in the universe, and end up in jail." [Via SF Signal]


Classic SF
"The Holes Around Mars" by Jerome Bixby, from Galaxy Science Fiction (January 1954).
"Science said it could not be, but there it was. And whoosh—look out—here it is again!" At Munseys and Project Gutenberg.



"Sinister Paradise" by Robert Moore Williams, from If: Worlds of Science Fiction (September 1952).
"It was like a mirage in reverse, this strange island off the California coast—it couldn't always be seen, but it was there—in Time." At Munseys and Project Gutenberg.

Comics
@Digital Comic Museum: The spirit of Tarzan lives with, Wambi the Jungle Boy #5, and partial issues of Jungle Comics #134 and Jungle Comics #141. In CBR downloads [Free membership required].







@Diversions of the Groovy Kind: "Who Is Haunting the Haunted Chateau?" by Sheldon Mayer and Alex Toth.





@Golden Age Comic Book Stories: Adventures Into Weird Worlds #25 (January 1954). featuring "The Men From Mars," "A Million Light-Years Away," and other sci-fi stories.

And Basically Strange #1 an odd collection of horror/fantasy comics.




@Savage Tales: Hawkmoon, The Jewel in the Skull #1: Part One of Four.
"Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln is one of the fictional characters created by Michael Moorcock in his series of the Eternal Champion books. Hawkmoon is one of the less "problematic" characters Moorcock ever created a series around."



@The Horrors of It All: "She Wouldn't Stay Dead!" from Mystic #6 (January 1952).

And "The Eyes!" / "The Hidden Graveyard" from Adventures into Weird Worlds #2 (Feb 1952) and Uncanny Tales #23 (Aug 1954) respectively. Very cool.


@Crosseyed Cyclops: Several issues of the rather strange Venus series. This comic started out as a humor/fantasy about the love goddess on Earth but slowly evolved into a horror/fantasy with some SF elements. In CBR downloads.