Friday Freebies - Part One

A  few very good freebies from yesterday, more to come later today!






Fiction
• Now Posted: Beneath Ceaseless Skies #116.

"A Family for Drakes" by Margaret Ronald. Fantasy.
     “The boy who owned them had another pair,” she lied. Maybe he had; she hadn’t checked under his mother’s body. Probably she should have; she’d made the long trek out and back after spotting the two huddled bodies... but pulling the little boots off cold feet had taken longer than she’d thought it would, and she’d been shivering too hard to search for more. “Bron, where’s our blanket?”
"Bakemono, or The Thing That Changes" by A.B. Treadwell. Fantasy.      "The Emperor of Japan punched through the soft belly of Russia on the day of my birth. My father’s men were the iron girding the fist. He showed me how it was on a rotting melon. The flesh caved in, and seeds spilled out."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Hope, Shattered" by Brian R. McDowell.
      "Her knees were bent, and her feet rested at the edge of the mattress. Perspiration dripped from her brow and soaked the synthetic brunette hair matted on her cheek. The liquid fell in a steady stream from the android's temples instead of beading in a glow, but it was a common flaw in manufactured pores."

Flash Fiction

• At Every Day Fiction: "The Nymph of Limantour" by J. J. Roth. Fantasy.
• At Nature: "Canopy of Skulls" by Beth Cato.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Ghost In The Machine" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Self Defense" by Patricia Stewart. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "Bakemono, or The Thing That Changes" by A.B. Treadwell. Fantasy.
      Described above

• At Escape Pod: "Finished" by Robert Reed. Science Fiction.
      "What did I plan? Very little, in truth. An evening walk accompanied by the scent of flowers and dampened earth, the lingering heat of the day taken as a reassurance, ancient and holy. I was genuinely happy, as usual. Like a hundred other contented walkers, I wandered through the linear woods, past lovers’ groves and pocket-sized sanctuaries and ornamental ponds jammed full of golden orfes and platinum lungfish."

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Episode 03 - The Beasts of Tarzan. Adventure.
     "Tarzan has fallen prey to the wiles of Nicholas Rokoff. Trapped in a steamer at sea, Tarzan knows only that his son also is in the clutches of the arch-fiend. He does not yet know that Jane has also been captured."

• At PodCastle: "Logic and Magic in the Time of the Boat Lift"by Cat Rambo and Ben Burgis. Fantasy.
     "They said the Marielitas were escoria – scum. The abuelitas muttered it to each other, and the young girls coming home from school clustered together like butterflies, looking thrilled and worried whenever the wind whistled at them. The newspapers said Miami was under siege, that Castro had loosed the worst from the Cuban prisons and madhouses."

Other Genres

• Audio at The New Yorker: “Girl” and “Wingless” by Jamaica Kincaid.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Scott Is" by Steve Calvert.

Free Fantasy

 There's some good free fantasy fiction today as Beneath Ceaseless Skies has two new stories available (and one audio fiction story) and a new Pathfinder serial begins at Paizo.

Today's QD radio is a significant step up from yesterday as we give you Dimension X's 1950 adaptation of Murray Leinster's "The Lost Race."  A discovery of alien ruins leads to a dangerous technology.

[Art from "In the Red Rune Cavern" linked below]






Fiction
• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies:

"Death Sent" by Christian K. Martinez. Fantasy.
      "One of the last great star lenses, a massive domelike construct of purpled glass and sheared bronze, fell from the sky as Mandate took refuge in a cemetery. Which, he supposed, was fitting."
 "The Stone Oaks" by Stephen Case. Fantasy.
      "I found Sister Mauro on the far side of the ridge beyond the barley field. She was kneeling at the base of one of the trees. When I think back on that spring, that is the image I recall: the hunched form of the sister in her black habit, dwarfed by the grey columns."

 • At Paizo: "In Red Rune Canyon - Chapter One: A Difference of Opinion" by Richard Lee Byers. Fantasy.
     "The wind blowing in Kagur's face smelled of rot. She started running, and the soft earth, boggy with the coming of summer, sucked at her feet. Her five companions ran as well."

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Final Corrections, Pittsburgh Times-Dispatch" by M. Bennardo.
• At Nature: "Pest control" by John Frizell. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "This Is What It’s All About" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "The Scorn of the Peregrinator" by John E.O. Stevens. Fantasy.
      "I raised the cairnskill feather, looked at the peregrinator through it. He became that shimmer again, indistinct but present."

• At Drama Pod: "Last Days of the Kelly Gang" by Davide De Levine. Sci-Fi.
      "An old tinkerer by the name of Ike is woken up from his sleep one night by Ned Kelly and his gang. They have heard of his forging skills and want him to build them armour......"

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs:  Episode 16 - The Return of Tarzan
         "Tarzan’s search for weapons has led him to a new tribe of black warriors, who have welcomed him in gratitude for saving the life of Busuli. The tribe has had a bad history with Arab ivory and slave traders."

Other Genres

• Audio at LibriVox: "The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" by Various. Detective.
• Audio at Miette's: "Water Liars" by Barry Hannah.
• Fiction at The New Yorker: "The Lost Order" by Rivka Galchen. Literary.
• Fiction at The Western Online: "The Killer and the Kid" by Charles Phillips.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Story: "The Diner" by Wayne Scheer. Romance.
• Flash Fiction at Flash Fiction Friday: "F3, Cycle 112: Extra, Extra, Read All About It…: The Stories"
• Flash Fiction at The Western Online: "Justice is Silent" by Daniel J. Kirk.

Friday Freebies Part One

Some good freebies this morning as two of the regular great genre fiction sites (Buzzy Mag and Daily Science Fiction) are joined by a speculative fiction story from The New Yorker!  And there's great audio fiction at Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and Tales to Terrify. If you're not familiar with all three of these, you have many great hours of catching up ahead of you.

More later today, including comics, e-books, and a very cool site.

Today's QD Radio is Nightfall's SF/Horror story "Hands Off" by John Graham. A dangerous chemical that triggers extreme aggression is accidental spilled.

[Art from "Shirley Temple Three" linked below]

Fiction
• At Buzzy Mag: "The Call Of The Golden Gate" by Daniel Powell. Horror.
      "There was a man–a scholar–who claimed to have identified the monstrous creature. His credentials to make such a claim were, by his own admission, questionable. Still . . . a significant part of me believes him. What are my alternatives? I saw the thing."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Death Before Dishonor" by Shannon Leight.
      "The siege lasted months, and those months were hard enough. Then the city fell and the conqueror marched in to claim the ashes, and Kere and I and every other living body were sold to Dogstown."

• At The New Yorker: "Shirley Temple Three" by Thomas Pierce. Speculative Fiction..
      "Tommy is driving in from Atlanta, where he works as the host of a popular show called “Back from Extinction.” On each episode they actually bring back long-dead, forgotten creatures—sabre-toothed tigers, dodo birds, and all the rest."

Flash Fiction

• At 365 Tomorrows: "Game Changer" by Desmond Hussey. Science Fiction.
• At Weirdyear: "Will Hug For Food" by Crowerd Robinson. Weird.
  

Audio Fiction
• At Escape Pod: "Shutdown" by Corry L. Lee. Science Fiction.
      "The alarm blared over the forest’s metallic rustling, and my HUD’s red warning light glazed the view through my faceplate. Ten seconds until the defense scan hit my position. Ten seconds until any motion, any electrical signature would whip vines down from the iron-cored trees, wrapping me as surely as steel cables, pinning me while cutter-bugs took me apart."

• At Pseudopod: "What Happens When You Wake Up In The Night" by Michael Marshall Smith. Horror.
     “The first thing I was unhappy about was the dark. I do not like the dark very very much. It is not the worst thing in the world but it is also not the best thing in the world, either. When I was very smaller I used to wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and be scared when I woke up, because it was so dark. I would go to bed with my light on, the one light that turns round and round, on the drawers by the side of my bed."

• At Tales to Terrify: "The Heart Is a Determined Hunter" by Thomas Smith. Horror.
     No description found.

Other Genres

• Audio at The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Thieves Who Couldn't Help Sneezing" by Thomas Hardy.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "The Air Above My Head" by Rachael Dunlop.