Monday Free Fiction - Part One

 More cool free items this morning, including a complete fantasy novel at Black Gate, several classic SF stories given new audio readings, continuing serialized audio and more.


 [Art from Astounding Stories #02 in Audio Fiction]










Fiction
• At Black Gate: The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells. Fantasy.
      "Despite the frosty night air and the chill wind off the river, there were other guests milling around on the wide marble portico, admiring the famous pediment. Madeline tucked her hands more firmly into her muff and shivered, partly from the cold, partly from anticipation. Her coachman received his instructions and urged the horses away, and her escort Captain Reynard Morane strolled back to her." A complete novel.

• At Cosmos: "Tranquility" by O.J. Cade.Science Fiction.
     "The cryonics case reminded her of a coffin, and Mary had to bite back a comment about rising from it like the undead. Making light of it wouldn’t make her feel any less claustrophobic."

• At The WiFiles: "Dreamweaver" by David Bridge. Speculative Fiction.
     "I just had a horrible dream. I dreamt a hundred gibbering goblins were ripping me apart, pulling my intestines out through my bellybutton."

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Bargain" by Henry Szabranski. 
• At Every Day Fiction: "Drawn to the Glow" by K.C. Ball. Audio. Fantasy.
• At New Myths: "Kitt the Shadow" by Rachel A. Dowling.
• At Quantum Muse: "The Future is in the Past" by Gordon Rowlinson.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Time Goblin" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Mathematics of Future Paradox" by Joe Malone. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Author's Site: "The MVP Episode #34" by Scott Sigler. Science Fiction. Football.
     "The Galaxy Bowl is heating up! It's Quentin and the Krakens vs. Don Pine and the Jupiter Jacks. Injuries have started to take their toll on both teams, and the gridiron runs red (and purple, and black) with blood."

• At Cthulhu: "The Shadow over Innsmouth, part 2" by H. P. Lovecraft.
     "The story describes a young man's discovery of a strange hybrid race, half-human and half an unknown creature that resembles a cross between a fish and a frog, that dwell in Innsmouth – a coastal town that had seen better days" - Wikipedia.

• At Drabblecast: "The Eyes Have It"  by Philip K. Dick. Science Fiction.
      "It was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known; I’m not the first to discover it. Maybe it’s even under control"

• At The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 05 - The Land That Time Forgot"
     "The U-33 has discovered a land mass. Seemingly surrounded by impenetrable cliffs, Bradley remembers the legend of Caprona, discovered but never explored by an Italian navigator centuries before. Finding an undersea river pouring into the sea from the land mass, the U-33 submerges and travels upstream."

• At LibriVox: "Astounding Stories 02, February 1930" Science Fiction.
     "This is the second issue of the classic science fiction Astounding Magazine. It contains the finale of The Beetle Horde by Victor Rousseau, as well as stories by Harl Vincent, Charles Willard Diffin, Hugh B. Cave, Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Sterner St. Paul, Anthony Pelcher and Captain S. P. Meek." Issue One Here (Contains part one of "The Beetle Horde"}

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard:  "The Amazing Mrs. Mimms!" by David C. Knight.
     "There was a muffled rushing noise and the faintly acrid smell of ion electrodes as the Time Translator deposited Mrs. Mimms back into the year 1958. Being used to such journeys, she looked calmly about with quick gray eyes, making little flicking gestures with her hands as if brushing the stray minutes and seconds from her plain brown coat."

Other Genres

• Audio at CrimeWAV: “Luck” by Johnny Shaw.
• Audio at Selected Shorts: "About Time"
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Down, on the Farm" • by Lyn Brown.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "The Horses" by Rebecca Schwarz

Return of the Freebies

A few of the great freebies from just the last couple of days. 




[Art for Drabblecast, linked in Audio Ficion below]



Fiction
• At The Colored Lens: "Shadow of the Rain Catchers – Part 1" by Dean Giles. Speculative Fiction .
      "The hang glider looked like a parrot with a broken wing, a patchwork of coloured cloth stitched together in a swooping arc across its five meter wingspan. The wings told the story of the last year of Ewan’s life. He had scrounged every scrap of material from old clothes, furniture, and even dried out rabbit hide."

• At Lightspeed: "Exogamy" by John Crowley. Fantasy.
     "In desperation and black hope he had selected himself for the mission, and now he was to die for his impetuosity, drowned in an amber vinegar sea too thin to swim in. This didn’t matter in any large sense; his comrades had seen him off, and would not see him return the very essence of a hero. In a moment his death wouldn’t matter even to himself. Meanwhile, he kept flailing helplessly, ashamed of his willingness to struggle."

• At Lightspeed: "Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege of Paris" by Carrie Vaughn. Science Fiction.
      "Harry looked out the window and thought: At least I saw Paris one more time before it was destroyed in the bombardment."

• At Nightmare Magazine: "Cry Room" by Ted Kosmatka. Horror.
       "The church looked normal from the outside. All steepled and angular in the way of good, rural Indiana churches of a certain age. Red brick and stained glass, St. Thomas Aquinas, surrounded on three sides by hot asphalt parking."

• At Project Gutenberg: "The Unwilling Professor" by Arthur Porges. Science Fiction. 1954.
     "The "Professor" had braved great perils to reach Earth, and believed he knew what he was up against. But he hadn't counted on the menace of Fatty Schultz and Irv Lece."

• At Short-Story.Me: "Fred" by Jeffery T. Ford. Science Fiction.
     "There are two-hundred sixteen stitches on a baseball. Its inner core is either rubber or cork. The baseball is wrapped in yarn that, if stretched, can reach up to a mile in length. The outside core that covers the tightly wrapped yarn is usually leather, sometimes plastic in the case of younger children."

• At Tor.com: "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" by John Chu.
      "In the near future water falls from the sky whenever someone lies (either a mist or a torrential flood depending on the intensity of the lie). This makes life difficult for Matt as he maneuvers the marriage question with his lover and how best to “come out” to his traditional Chinese parents."

• At The World SF Blog: "Eagle Feathers" by Joyce Chng.
     "Noraishah watched the dance of the eagles in the air, her digital camera poised in her hands. She seemed to have forgotten about it, so transfixed was she to the dizzying spiralling movements of the sea-eagles. They were a mated pair, appearing frequently in the skies. As long as she could remember, there had always been a mated pair of Lang Siput. White-bellied sea eagles."

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "A Hairy Predicament" by Melissa Mead.  
• At Every Day Fiction: "Third Time's the Charm" by Robert J. Santa. Fantasy.
• At Flashes in the Dark: "The Devil and Father Joseph" by Reed Beebe. Horror.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Run For Your Life" by Patricia Stewart. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Protect The Weak" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.
• At Yesteryear Fiction: "The Field of Endallah" by Josh Susie.  Fantasy.

Audio Fiction
• At Drabblecast: "The Electric Ant" by Phillip K. Dick.
     "At four-fifteen in the afternoon, T.S.T., Garson Poole woke up in his hospital bed, knew that he lay in a hospital bed in a three-bed ward and realized in addition two things: that he no longer had a right hand and that he felt no pain."

• At PodCastle: "Bleaker Collegiate Presents an All-Female Production of Waiting for Godot" by Claire Humphrey. Fantasy.
     "Making friends with Ginevra was like taming a stray cat. First I started hanging around in areas where she might be found. If she showed, I didn’t approach her. I just stood there, smoking, or I read something, glancing at her secretly from behind my hair. Then I started catching her eye once in a while. Then I started smiling."

• At Protecting Project Pulp: “The Experiment In Gyro-Hats” by Ellis Parker Butler. Science Fiction.
     "The idea of a gyro-hat did not come to me all at once, as some great ideas come to inventors. In fact I may say that but for a most unpleasant experience I might never have thought of gyro-hats at all."

• At StarShipSofa: "Citizen-Astronaut" by David D. Levine.  Science Fiction.
      "You are probably also aware of the difficulties we've been having with funding and public opinion." We'd had people on Mars continuously for over eight years now. The initial discoveries of water and life -- frozen, sub-surface water and fossils of microscopic, long-extinct life -- had been newsworthy, but after that interest had declined steadily."

• At Tales of Old: "Memory is Translucent" by Adele Gardner. Horror.
     "Your good friend Dr. John Seward was found dead this morning in his office. The police thought at first that he died by his own hand, but the strenuous objections of all who knew him, and the escape of one of the more violent inmates, have called this verdict into question."

Great Freebies, Bad QD Radio

Some great freebies this morning.  There's a trio of free fiction stories (including a horror story by Lisa Tuttle), some flash fiction (including a Cat Rambo story), and several worthy audio fiction stories (including readings of Philip K Dick and W.W. Jacobs classic "The Monkey's Paw")

 For more great freebies, don't forget to check out SF Signal, Best science Fiction Stories, Variety SF, and Free SF Reader.  All great sites!

 Today's QD Radio is "Almost Human" on Dimension X.  [If you haven't  listened to the prior episodes of Dimension X, don't listen to this one. It's possibly the worst episode of the series.]

[Today's art is from "Monkey's Paw" in the audio fiction section]

Fiction
• At Black Gate: “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye” by John R. Fultz. Fantasy.
      "The haunted city lay sleeping at the feet of the mountains, a gray collection of antique architecture encircled by a granite wall. A monolith rose from its central plaza, crowned by a crimson orb that refracted starlight, painting the streets with bloody shadow. Pale ghosts wandered along the avenues, silver phantasms gliding through vermilion, while the living stayed locked inside their shuttered houses."

• At Nightmare Magazine: "Need" by Lisa Tuttle. Horror.
       "After ballet, Corey liked to walk home through the cemetery. The grounds were large and well tended and offered the visitor a wealth of picturesque monuments and sentimental gravestone inscriptions, some of them dating back before the Civil War. There were columns, slabs, and spheres in abundance of the pinkish marble that was quarried locally, and among the mausoleums built to look like temples, chapels and houses was one defiant pink pyramid."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "Ajantala, the Noxious Guest" by Amos Tutuola.
      “It is time now for you to suspend killing bush animals, for if you continue to do so you will kill the baby that your wife is going to deliver when it is time, and she will deliver of a terrible creature in the form of a baby when it is time for her to deliver.”

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Fool's Gold" by Melissa Mead. 
• At Every Day Fiction: "The Passing of Grandmother's Quilt" by Cat Rambo. Weird Fantasy.
• At Yesteryear Fiction: "Wrong Number" by Chris Sharp. Fantasy.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Librarian" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Drabblecast: "I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee" by Christopher Reynaga. Horror.
      Don’t call me anything at all. Give me my pint of piss-poor ale and leave me be in this yellowed corner where men relieve themselves when they are too lazy to make three extra stumbling steps to the streets of Nantucket."

• At Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: Tales from the Archives — A 2012 Christmas Special by Phillipa Ballantine. Steampunk.
      "It’s Christmas Eve, and Verity Fitzroy finds herself distracted from her duties with the Ministry Seven. When she endangers her fellow urchins, she begins to question her role in their life."

• At StarShipSofa: "How I Lost Eleven Stone and Found Love" by Ian Creasey. Science Fiction.
      "The magazine's story was a heartwarming tale of someone finding romantic fulfilment, after losing weight through the conventional methods of diet and exercise.  I thought it would be much more interesting if you could lose weight by owning an alien flesh-eating parasite that would crawl across your skin, insert its proboscis deep into your body, then feast upon your flabby torso."

• At SFFaudio: "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield. Fantasy.
    "Miss Brill, an English teacher working in France, lives in a small room near the Jardains Publique. Every Sunday she visits the gardens and listens to the music of the band, admires the attire of her fellow park-goers, and eavesdrops on their conversations."

• At SFFaudio: "Of Withered Apples" by Philip K. Dick
      "Lori picked the leaf up. It was old and brown. Her heart skipped a beat as she slipped the leaf into the pocket of her jeans. Against her loins the leaf cut and tingled, a little hard point piercing her smooth skin and sending exciting shivers up and down her spine. "

• At Tales of Old: "The Monkey’s Paw" by W.W. Jacobs. Horror.
      “That’s the worst of living so far out,” bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; “of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway’s a bog, and the road’s a torrent. I don’t know what people are thinking about. I suppose because only two houses on the road are let, they think it doesn’t matter.”

Dick, Pathfinder, Tor.com, and Flash Fiction

Some free text fiction to begin the day.  A new Pathfinder serial begins at Paizo, a new story is up at Tor.com, and a classic PKD story at Project Gutenberg. And there's some good flash fiction.  More later and don't miss SF Signal's latest free fiction roundup.


[Art from Thieves Vinegar]







Fiction
At Paizo: "Thieves Vinegar - Chapter One: The Old Quay" by Kevin Andrew Murphy. Fantasy. Pathfinder.
      ""Observe, Orlin." Norret scooped a vial of purple cabbage water from the leaves I was blanching for the afternoon's meal. "Note how the introduction of even a weak acid transmutes the deepest amethyst to brilliant fuchsia...." He added a drop of vinegar and swirled it."

At Project Gutenberg: "The Hanging Stranger" by Philip K. Dick. Science Fiction. 1953.
      "Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw it hanging in the town square."

At Tor.com: "The Finite Canvas" by Brit Mandel.
      "We are marked by what we have been. And erasing either of those can have unpredictable consequences..."


Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction:  "Live-Tweeting the Apocalypse" by Ian Crease.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Set Theory" by Sarah Crysl Akhtar. Science Fiction.
• At Nature: "Time and again" by Moshe Sipper. Science Fiction.
• At New Scientist: "Sleep" by Richard Clarke. Science Fiction.
• At New Scientist: "Too good to be true" by Jouni Sarkijarvi. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Indestructabuddies" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.

Fantastic Friday Freebies - Part 1

Wow, what a good start to the freebies.  There's some very good Science Fiction and Fantasy in the fiction section, including news entries from Baen, Cosmos, and Daily Science Fiction - great sites all. And "Killing Time continues at Paizo - huzzah!

And there are some great audio fiction stories, including a trio of horror tales from two incredible sites Pseudopod and Tales to Terrify (Save those stories for tonight). There are a pair of stories at the always outstanding Clarkesworld (one new and one I believe I missed earlier this month). Escape Pod (Now up to 369!! outstanding episodes) adds a fun science fiction story. And for the icing on the cake SFFAudio has an adaption of a classic PKD story and LibriVox has Marlowe's classic Doctor Faustus play. [I will try to have a second post today for e-books, comics, flash fiction, news, gaming, and other items I may have missed in the rush this morning]

[Art from "Killing Time" linked below]


Fiction

At Baen Books: "Angel in Flight" by Sarah A. Hoyt. Science Fiction.

      "The zipway bisected Europe east to west and the speeds and closeness of vehicles were only possible because driving had been turned over to a series of control towers. The passengers in the flyers had nothing to do but read the advertisements, until the zipway exited them at their chosen destination."

At Cosmos: "Woman Train" by Kaaron Warren. Science Fiction.
      "Our clothes are red, our haircuts rough, but we are well, and smart and rich and happy, and the men can’t enter our domain unless we want them to."

At Daily Science Fiction: "This Place From Which All Roads Go" by Jennifer Mason-Black.
      "They come to study us. Not to help. They watch my father struggle his way through his chores and make notes in their notebooks, too busy charting our future to join our present. In any case, I've no reason to believe their help would be of use. Their essence smells different--arid, dusty--and it blisters the leaves it touches."

At Paizo: "Killing Time - Chapter Two: Token of Affection" by Dave Gross. Fantasy.
      "He slid a step closer before thinking better of it. He had a good five inches of height on me. Along with the sword, that gave him plenty of reach. In the narrow alley, that gave him one hell of an advantage. Judging from the purses I saw dangling from his belt, it'd been working out for him so far."

Audio Fiction
At Clarkesworld:

"(To See the Other) Whole Against the Sky" by E. Catherine Tobler.

      "Close your eyes. As you travel farther away from me, your ship becoming little more than a pinprick of light amid infinite pinpricks of light, I want you to remember me as I was the first time you saw me, in the field. The day I glowed."

"Aquatica" by Maggie Clark.

       "When Host laughed, her esca wriggled, and the gills behind her pectoral fins vented hard enough to stir up the silt. Organ tumbled in the waste-stream’s wake, but kept one tiny black eye fixed on her bobbing, bioluminescent beacon—the first he had seen in six turns of the current along the foreign reef."

At Escape Pod: "The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1" by M. Darusha Wehm.
       "The first day I meet my human herd they are so well-behaved that I wonder if they really need me at all. I arrive at their dwelling, and am greeted by the largest one of their group. I access the manual with which I have been programmed and skip to Section 3: Verbal and Physical Clues for Sexing Humans."

At Pseudopod: "The Crawlspace" by Russell Bradbury-Carlin. Horror.
      "There was a splash where there shouldn’t have been. [. . .] The splash had sounded distinctly like a weighty object –- a hand, maybe — slapping the surface of a body of water."

At SFFAudio: "Beyond Lies The Wub" Adapted from the story by Philip K. Dick.
     "The wub survived the take-off, sound asleep in the hold of the ship. When they were out in space and everything was running smoothly, Captain Franco bade his men fetch the wub upstairs so that he might perceive what manner of beast it was."

At Tales to Terrify: Episode 45. Horror.
     "Little Pig" by Anna Taborska. and  "An Eye for an Eye" by Nancy Kilpatrick.


Other Genres
Audio at LibriVox: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1616 version) by Christopher Marlowe.  
The classic "Deal With the Devil" Play.

Great Freebies By Kress, Dick, Sigler, and More.

There's some really great stuff today.  Lightspeed has a pair of cool sounding stories, including  "Beyond the Reach of His Gods" illustrated to the left and a Nancy Kress SF story in both text and audio. And there's much more free fiction including two magazines. There's some classic SF at LibriVox and Protecting Project Pulp and Scott Sigler starts the audio of his latest GFL novel (always awesome).  There may be a second freebies post* today as I haven't even looked at the Comics, Gaming, and E-Book sites yet - and my team of free fiction super-ninja spies are currently raiding SF Signal's Free Fiction Links.


Fiction
At Daily Science Fiction: "Caput Mortuum" by Andrew Kay. 
     "The Master's voice trickles from the speaking tube. "Renán," he says, his voice an urgent orange but matte with kindness, "please come downstairs."
At Lightspeed: "Beyond the Reach of His Gods" by Brian Ruckley. Fantasy.
     "An unseen log boomed against Wolfrun’s hull. In the last few days, Rhuan of the Grey Hall had taken to posting a lookout on the prow, to ward against just such events. This great, fat monstrosity of a river seemed at times to carry almost as much debris as it did water."
At Lightspeed: "Art of War" by Nancy Kress. Science Fiction.
    “Return fire!” the colonel ordered, bleeding on the deck of her ship, ferocity raging in her nonetheless controlled voice.
At Philippine Genre Stories: "The New Daughter" by Dean Francis Alfar. Fantasy.
     "When the boy inevitably grew up, married and moved away with his own growing family, the toymaker decided to make a girl."
At Strange Horizons: "The Lord of Discarded Things" by Lavie Tidhar. Speculative Fiction.
     "There were still alte-zachen men in Jaffa and Central Station in those days, as there always were and always will be, and chief amongst them was Ibrahim, he who was sometimes called The Lord of Discarded Things." 


Now Posted: Innsmouth Magazine #11. Horror.

• "The Dark Island" by William Meikle.
• "The Drowned Ballet" by Kirsten Alene.
• "Charlotte Babbage and the Engine of Liberia" by Andrew Dombalagian.
• "The Boston Look" by Evan Dicken
• "Prayer to the Priest of Dreams" by| Josh Storey.
• "Dinner at Majak’s" by Nghi Vo.

 Now Posted: Resident Aliens October/November Issue.

• "Silence of the Imbeciles" by John C. Conway. Speculative Fiction.
• "The Light in Everything" by Dan Grace. Speculative Fiction.
• "Masters of the Earth" by Margaret Karmazin. Science Fiction.
• "The Newborn" by Alex Mellen. Science Fiction.
• "A Different Blessing" by Milton Davis. Zombies.

Audio Fiction
At Author’s Site: The MVP Episode #1 by Scott Sigler. Science Fiction.
     "If you recall the end of Book III in this series, our fighting Krakens were stranded in a place they did not want to be, about to be boarded by sentients they did not want to meet. We pick up the story right from there."
At LibriVox:  "Omega: The Last Days of the World" by Camille Flammarion. Science Fiction. 1894.
     "On 25th century Earth, a comet is on a path to collide with the Earth ending it all. Astronomers predict different scenarios as to how they will all die depending on the chemical composition of the comet. Omega probes the philosophical and political consequences that arise as the human race faces the end of the world."
At LibriVox: "The Eyes Have It and Tony and the Beetles" by Philip K. Dick. Science Fiction.
     "Aliens have invaded the earth! Horrible one celled creatures disguised as normal human beings" and "10 year old Tony grows up fast when history catches up with the human race. A sobering look at human history .. and our probable future."
At Lightspeed: "Art of War" by Nancy Kress. Science Fiction.
    “Return fire!” the colonel ordered, bleeding on the deck of her ship, ferocity raging in her nonetheless controlled voice.
At Protecting Project Pulp: “The Way Down the Hill” by Tim Powers. Speculative Fiction. 1982.
     "The rich, leathery smell of Latakia tobacco told me that old Bill was there, and I soon identified him by the long, blackened meerschaum pipe he somehow found again every time. The little girl puffing at it gave me a raised eyebrow."
At Toasted Cake: "Your Cities" by Anaea Lay. Speculative Fiction.
     "It's like the city just shrugged," somebody whispered. 


*Or if I get too busy or too lazy, they'll be up tomorrow.

Robert Vardeman Serial, Good Free Fiction, and a Bad Free Movie.

Some very good stuff today. Beneath Ceaseless Skies has another great issue out as does Four Star Stories, which should be a treat. Lots of good fantasy. Some very good classic and reviewed SF, including a Northwest Smith story by C.L. Moore (one of my favorite early SF writers). And a Pathfinder fantasy serial by Robert Vardeman! starting at Paizo. Great audio, including some episodes of Mindwebs (an e1970s radio equivalent of today's best fiction podcasts), BCS audio-fiction, and the latest BtHM.

And very much not in the good category, a 1960 TV movie The Cape Canaveral Monsters. With a 2.4 IMDb rating, this is only for connoisseurs of bad films, people who feel they must watch every professional Sci-Fi film ever made, and those exceptionally deranged people who fall into both categories (I'll likely be watching it this weekend)


Image from "Clever Love" in the fiction section.







Now Posted: Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #72. Fantasy.
"Sightwolf" by Erin Hoffman. Fantasy.

"In Astralar, middling flint-walled city pressed against the chill bosom of the Windsmouth Mountains, a woman will be banished for failure to pay taxes."

"The Moral Education of a Mad Bastard" by Joe L. Murr. Fantasy.

I was twelve when I, like my father before me, was sentenced to transportation to Sutterland. My crime was the theft of a leg of lamb. I stole to feed myself and, if Governor Bidwell was to be believed, because I could not do otherwise.

Now Posted: Four Star Stories Summer 2011

"Mak Siccar" by Lou Antonelli.

"It looks like it is going to be a fine morning." The Second Mate looked sideways at his companion. "I hope you enjoy this little liberty. Ten minutes, and it’s back in cuffs and down below for you."

"Clever Love" by R. L. Copple. Fantasy.

"The forest beckoned Jal'ra to return. His elvish kinsmen romped among those branches. Memories of children chasing squirrels and each other demanded he not leave. No longer sensing the familiar melody of the trees resonating in his heart didn't help either."

"Strawman at the Door" by David L. Gray.

"Mark Jacobs materialized in the dark alley, stumbled hard, then had to twist 180 degrees to break his fall with his left buttock against the side of an empty dumpster. It produced a low, metallic booming sound and a throbbing pain in his left hip."

"Fish Story" by Selina Rosen.

"'All right buddy where are you going in such a hurry,' The trooper said shining a flashlight in the guy’s window. The guy was filthy covered with mud and what might have been blood."

Reviewed Free SF
@BestScienceFictionStories.com: "The Cassandra Project" by Jack McDevitt (2010) science fiction. In text and MP3.

"It is about an ancient dome discovered on the far side of the Moon."

Classic SF/ Weird Tales
@Internet Archive: "Gunner Cade" by Cyril Judd, from the March, April, May 1952 issues of Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

"Gunner Cade, a professional soldier of the Realm of Man, is captured by rebel forces on Mars but escapes, only to find that he is being hunted by fellow gunners."

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "When the Mountain Shook" by Robert Abernathy. Science Fiction. From IF Worlds of Science Fiction March 1954.

"Dark was the Ryzga mountain and forbidding; steep were its cliffs and sheer its crevasses. But its outward perils could not compare with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and conquer...."

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "Piper in the Woods" by Philip K Dick. Science Fiction. From Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1953. Science Fiction.

"Earth maintained an important garrison on Asteroid Y-3. Now suddenly it was imperiled with a biological impossibility—men becoming plants!"

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "A Woman's Place" by Mark Clifton. Science Fiction. From Galaxy Science Fiction May 1955.

"Home is where you hang up your spaceship—that is, if you have any Miss Kitty along!"

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "The Door into Infinity" by Edmond Hamilton. Weird. From Weird Tales August-September 1936. Weird.

"An amazing weird mystery story, packed with thrills, danger and startling events."

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "The Tree of Life" by C L Moore. Science Fiction. From Weird Tales October 1936. Weird.

"A gripping tale of the planet Mars and the terrible monstrosity that called its victims to it from afar—a tale of Northwest Smith"

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "The Genius" by Con Pederson. Science Fiction. From IF Worlds of Science Fiction May 1954. Weird.

"Sethos was a great artist, a talented man, quite possibly the most famous man of his time and world. But, alas!—there were other worlds. And is not the grass always greener...?"

Serial Fiction
@Paizo.com: "Plow and Sword - Chapter One: Smoke on the Horizon" by Robert E. Vardeman.
"It took several minutes for the cougar's ululating screech to make Rorr look up from his autumn plowing. The day was unseasonably warm for Neth, and sweat trickled down his back. He knew the heat was an illusion—cutting through the dried brown chaff remaining in his field and plowing it under for spring fertilizer had to be completed soon, before snow buried the land."











@Internet Archive: Eleven episodes of the classic "semi-dramatized" radio series Mindwebs. Science Fiction.

"Many of the readings were enhanced by music, periodic sound cues, and the occasional character voice, however they are not completely dramatized. In a way Mind Webs stories are a cross between radio drama and audio books."

@Beware the Hairy Mango: Episode 81 "They Call Me Johnny Eggroll" by Matthew Sanborn Smith. Weird Fiction. [via SF Signal]


@Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "The Nine-Tailed Cat" by Michael J. DeLuca

"The cat departs from the moonbeam, flicking its tails."

@Internet Archive: The Cape Canaveral Monsters. 1960 TV Movie. Streaming and for download. Sci-Fi.

"When a couple are killed in an auto accident their bodies are immediately inhabited by extraterrestrial beings. Taking refuge in an underground cave, the aliens attempt to sabotage the U.S. space program."

Bizarro, Dick, Reynolds, Rusch, and More.

Added fiction since this morning's difficulties. Some good fiction (including flash and audio) today. There's a bit more weird/bizarro than usual by pure chance. More goodies tomorrow - I'm tired of my crappy internet company today. [I censored *barely* one title, so don't be shocked if it's different at the site. And I'm sure the other bizarro title will mess up Google ads, which seem to think this is a St. Louis sightseeing blog anyway).







@Lightspeed Magazine: "Scales" by Alastair Reynolds. Science Fiction.
"The reptile is splayed in a harness, stretched like a frog on the dissection table. A steady stream of soldiers-in-waiting leaves the line, jabbing an electro-prod through the bars of the cage to a chorus of jeers."

@Bizarro Central: A pair of Bizarro fiction (Over-the-top New Weird) books are available HERE in free PDF downloads until the end of the month.

1. Abortion Arcade by Cameron Pierce.
"The apocalypse is over. Now zombies farm humans for their brains. As the imprisoned human cattle drift further from their humanity, the zombies flourish in a primitive renaissance, flying around in helicopters and living in smart houses made of human brains."

and 2. Rico Slade Will F*cking Kill You by Bradley Sands.
"Rico Slade has a problem. His arch-nemesis, Baron Mayhem, is threatening to drop a bomb on the Earth that will kill every human being except himself while leaving the world’s currency intact."

@Daily Science Fiction: "Say Zucchini, and Mean It" by Peter M Ball.
"That summer you'd find them everywhere. They'd started calling it an epidemic on the news, and the government was paying a bounty to good Samaritans who called a new case in"

@The author's site: "Advisors at Naptime" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (2007). Up until Monday 30 May 2011.
"A science fiction short story of naps and world domination"







@SFFaudio: Podcast number #109 featuring "The Hanging Man" by Philip K. Dick.
"At five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay."




@PodCastle: Episode #158 "Gone Daddy Gone" by Josh Rountree, read by Dave Thompson. Fantasy.
"Six leather jackets lay sunning on the rocks. Moon Doggie braved the crashing waves and found the one he knew was hers. Still couldn’t say how he knew but he knew. Snatched it up, took it back to his T-Bird. It smelled like the earth and the sky. The leather was cracked and ancient."

@Beware the Hairy Mango: (All by Matthew Sanborn Smith. All Weird Flash)

• Episode 68 "The Secret Lives of Sinister Shoes"
• Episode 69 "Earth Science"
• Episode 70 "Scatman"
• Episode 71 "Stretching for Victory"
• Episode 72 "Stick With Me, Baby"

Serial Audio
@The Drama Pod: Journey to the Centre of the Earth Part Twelve.
Continuing Jules Verne's classic adventure novel.

Fan and Serial Audio @Pendant Productions:

• Episode 20 of the Genesis Avalon podcast.
• Episode Thirty-nine of the Seminar podcast.
• Issue 4 of the Green Arrow: Shooting Star podcast.
• Issue 64 of the Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira podcast.
• Episode 2x02 of THE LINE podcast.

@Absent Willow Review: [Poem] "The Wolf and Red" by Pam Jessen. Horror.
@Daily Science Fiction: "The Instructions" by Amanda C. Davis.
@Mindflights: [Poem] "Visitors" by Marge Simon. Fantasy.
@Strange Horizons: [Poem] "If Alice. . ." by Alexandra Seidel. Speculative Fiction.
@Flashes in the Dark: "A Strange Word" by Michael A. Kechula. Horror.
@Flashes in the Dark: "And Da’Bitch Came Back" by Acquanetta M. Sproule. Horror.
@Eschatology: "Stitch" by Steve Toase. Horror.
@The New Flesh: "Have a Cigar" by Kurt Newton. Horror.
@The New Flesh: "Fleeting Thoughts" by Joseph W. Patterson. Horror.
@Quantum Muse: "Down and Out" by Nathan Parshall. Science Fiction.

@365 tomorrows:

• "Freedom!" by Krista Bunskoek. Science Fiction.
• "The Perfect Prison" by Colin O’Boyle. Science Fiction.
• "Futureblind" by Justin Short. Science Fiction.
• "The Dutiful Husband by Martinus Guzman. Science Fiction.

@Weirdyear:

• "Van Gogh's Ear" by Midori Chen.
• "I am Hope" by Liz Haigh.
• "Bubbles" by Michael C. Thompson.
• "Nostalgia" by Miriam H. Harrison.

Fantasy and Dark Fiction and Audio, and Classic SF - All Free

Some great free fantasy and dark fiction today as three of the premiere sites (Tor, ChiZine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies) have new stuff. Classic SF, Flash Fiction and Poetry, and some cool audio (fantasy, dark, and wuxia). And now cool Comics.

Illustration for "Shannon’s Law" by Cory Doctorow, also added since the partial posting earlier.








@Tor.com: "The Iron Shirts" by Michael F. Flynn.
"To the battles of 13th-century Ireland come new warriors...from across the Western Sea."



Also at Tor.com: "Shannon’s Law" by Cory Doctorow.
"When the Way opened again, the day I turned seventeen, I didn’t hesitate. I packed everything I could carry—every scratched phone, every half-assembled laptop, every stick of memory, and every Game Boy I could fit in a duffel bag."


@Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Issue #68 featuring fantasy fiction:
"The Finest Spectacle Anywhere" by Genevieve Valentine.
"I could hardly keep from laughing at the rubes that panicked and then applauded three times as loud as they would have if it had all been perfect. Elena and the others had Boss's copper bones—what could happen to them that couldn't be mended?"

and "Buzzard's Final Bow" by Jason S. Ridler.
"They ran through the tumbles and bumps, grips and leaps, Buzzard tossing and turning with Razor as she barely noticed, thrashing about to make it look real."

@ChiZine.com: The Chiaroscuro: Volume 47, Week 5 featuring Dark fiction.
"Dogs Want to Eat You" by Ralph Robert Moore.
"Upstairs, in the bedroom, flat on his back, paralyzed, James heard, from below, his wife’s moans, her final scream."

"Fortune" by Shira Lipkin.
"A man, shuffling and reshuffling a deck of oversized cards . . . one leg extended, one folded, a mirror of Vegas Vic above him. He was talking to himself—no, singing, with the buzz and hiss of neon drowning him out almost completely."

"The Performer" by Philip Nutman.
"None of this came as a surprise: he had suggesting remaking Cammell & Roeg’s PERFORMANCE as a joke just to piss off the suits at Warners, who’d paid him $3 million for a two picture deal after his remake of Disney’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA had grossed $190 M domestically."

"Dirty Money" by S. E. Ward.
"Quick-change, one hand to the next, liquid far from its source. A bill, a suck; money, money, money. Pop the cap. Drink it down. Ooze, jet, scarlet, spray. Wait for the shudder of someone else’s sight to pass."

"The Spider House Rules" by Rain Graves.
"They had a club like important boys do, and there were secret words, secret things to keep in boxes like a candle and matches, secret handshakes, and secret things to do. It was important to be secret; no girls allowed."

and "Last of His Kind" by Sandra McDonald.
"Those of you who still explore graveyards and scour old records might as well hang up your wooden stakes, or use them to mark seedlings in vegetable gardens, or burn them in fires; the vampiri are gone, finito, they no longer swoop through the sky or glide before mirrors which do not show their reflections."

Classic SF
@The Internet Archive: "The Lost Machine" by John Beynon Harris (John Wyndham), from Amazing Stories (April 1932 ) [via Marooned - Science Fiction & Fantasy books on Mars].
"Psychologists -- and others -- are greatly concerned about the effects -- possible and assured -- of machines and the machine age, on human life and endeavor. But who has ever stopped to consider the possible reactions -- or thoughts -- of the advanced machine of the future?"

@Project Gutenberg: Four Philip K Dick science fiction stories have been updated with additional e-book options.

• The Crystal Crypt
  
• Mr. Spaceship
  
• Second Variety
  
• The Variable Man
  

Serial Fiction
@Paizo.com: "Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver" by Erik Mona, Chapter Three: Beyond the Demon Lens.
"For a long moment Korm Calladan felt only a pleasant warmth. Gone were the fears of starvation, the thrill of combat in the cramped underdeck of the Queen's Lament, the suspicion of the Lady Iranez and her imposing crew."







@Dark Fiction Magazine: Issue 7: "Sacred Fire" [via Free SF Reader].
"Dark Fiction Magazine is a monthly, short fiction podcast magazine, bringing [. . .] the very best that horror, fantasy, and science-fiction has to offer."

"Xenos Beach" by Graham Joyce, read by Danny Davies.
"The Winter King" by Liz Williams, read by Kim Lakin-Smith.
"Who Slays The Gyant, Wounds The Beast" by Mark Chadbourn, read by Marty Perrett.
"Paying For Rain" by Jaine Fenn, read by Emma Newman.

@Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "The Fairy Gaol" by Heather Fawcett, from Issue #66 (Apr. 7, 2011).
"I will fashion a dagger worthy of his jeweled throat."

@Kung Fu Action Theater: Kung Fu Action Tales, Episode Four - "The Inuyama Rebellion, Part 1- The Two Samurai"
"Knowing that the declaration of independence will surely bring the deaths of her sons, the clan lord’s wife, Lady Murasaki, has secretly dispatched two of the clan’s samurai -the elder Jiro and his apprentice Masato- to Kurokawa lands in an effort to rescue the boys"







@Every Day Fiction: "His Mother's Son" by JR Hume. SF.
@Flashes in the Dark: "La Muerte" by Cynthia (cina) Pelayo.
@365 tomorrows: "The Vendetta" by Patricia Stewart.
@Weirdyear: "Snowflakes" by Ian Chung.
@Eschatology: "The Icicle" by Rick McQuiston.
@Daily Science Fiction: "Vacuum Decay" by Ramon Rozas.
@ChiZine: [Dark Poetry]

• Mississippi Twilight by Chad Hensley
• Moon Ship Sailing by Robin Mayhall
• Bluebeard by Joanne Merriam
• Comet Flyby by John Park
• Lucan in Averno by Sonya Taaffe

Classic Comics

• @The Horrors of It All: "Demon from the Deep!" (1952). Horror
• @Crosseyed Cyclops!: The Green Planet #1 (1962). SciFi. and many issues of Ghostly Tales.
• @Ditko Comics: "Stranger In The House" (1957) and "Free" (1957). Horror.
• @Fantasy-Ink: "Has-Been" (1955) SciFi.
• @Secret Sanctum of Captain Video: The adaptaion of Dr. Who and the Daleks part 1 and part 2.

Online Comic
Escape From Terra "is a continuing story set in the late 21st Century. and concerns humanity's advance both through outer space and social evolution. People living in the frontier are liberated from traditional power structures and free to develop new customs and rules as may suit them -- although the United World government on Terra (Earth) is envious of colonial success and anxious to establish its grip on human lives and wealth as far as it can." Looks interesting.

Elaine Cunningham, Kim Stanley Robinson, Weird Tales, and More Freeness

A bit of a quiet day, but still some great free items. New Fiction by Elaine Cunningham, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Peter Orullian. Classic P.K.D. and a trio of Weird Tales stories from the 1930s (and some art), comics, flash fiction, audio fiction, and more. [Illustration from "The Illusionist" by Elaine Cunningham]








Fiction
@Paizo.com: "The Illusionist" by Elaine Cunningham.
"Still, the school is world-renowned, and I felt one might reasonably expect a certain breadth of knowledge in its scholars. To my surprise, little is known of the Mwangi Expanse. We are all one to these northerners. When they express admiration for my gold ornaments and the thread-art on my garments, their manner suggests an expectation of jangar-skin loin clouts and necklaces of monkey bone."

@Tor.com: "The Lunatics" by Kim Stanley Robinson, from Brave New Worlds.
"They were very near the center of the moon, Jakob told them. He was the newest member of the bullpen, but already their leader." [via Free SF Reader]

@Tor.com: "The Battle of the Round" by Peter Orullian.
"Maral Praig knelt beside the bleeding soldier and examined his wounds. A sword or spear had punctured the man’s gut several times. He would die if Maral did not heal him."

Classic SF
@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "Isle of the Undead" by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, from Weird Tales (Oct. 1936.)
"A gripping, thrilling, uncanny tale about the frightful fate that befell a yachting party on the dreadful island of living dead men"





@BestScienceFiction: A review of, as well as a link to, "Paycheck" by Philip K. Dick (1953).
"ALL AT ONCE he was in motion. Around him smooth jets hummed. He was on
a small private rocket cruiser, moving leisurely across the afternoon sky,
between cities."

@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "Here Lies" by H.W. Guernsey, from Weird Tales (Oct. 1937).
"An ironic little story about a practical communist who taught his friend when to take him seriously"

@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "The Last of Mrs DeBrugh" by H. Sivia, from Weird Tales (Oct. 1937).
"Mr. DeBrugh was dead, but he still regarded his promise as a sacred duty to be carried out."







@StarShipSofa: Episode #184 featuring: [Fiction] "A Very Private Tour of A Very Public Museum"by Scott Edelman, [Poetry] "Poetry Planet" by Diane Serverson, and [Serial] "Grail-Diving in Shangrilla with the World’s Last Mime" by Ken Scholes, with narrators Jeff Lane and Josh Roseman.








@Flashes in the Dark: "Instinct" by Lori Titus.
@365 tomorrows: "Special Ops" by Roi R. Czechvala.
@Daily Science Fiction: "N is for Nevermore Nevermore Land" by Tim Pratt, Jenn Reese, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout.


Comics
@Crosseyed Cyclops: Journey Into Unknown Worlds #53 in CBR download. Sci-Fi.







@Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine: "The Sorceress of Zoom" from Weird Comics #17 (1941). Fantasy/Crimefighter.

@The Comic Book Catacombs: Sheena, Queen of the Jungle in "Vengeance of the Talu Chief" from Sheena #1 (Spring 1942) Pulp Adventure.

@Atomic Kommie Comics: Cave Girl in "Ape God of Kor" from Thun'da #2. Prehistoric Adventure.


Other Coolness
[Art] Conan Images. "The Tree of Life" at Crom! and Weird Tales and paperback covers at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

@Paleofuture: [Futurism Fail] "Picnics on Mars in the Year 2012" (1962).