Clarkesworld and More Freebies

More free genre entertainment, including the latest issue of Clarkesworld Magazine (which always rocks!). And a new monthly issue of Quantum Muse (check it out).  There's also great audio fiction from Escape Pod and Clarkesworld, more e-books, old time radio, a classic horror comic, and a couple of westerns for variety.

Be sure to check SF Signal for links that may have missed here and for any opinionated people, be sure to weigh in on Disney's acquisition of the Star Wars franchise at Beam Me Up.





Fiction
Now Posted: Clarkesworld Magazine: Issue 74, November 2012
"(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."
"Everything Must Go" by Brooke Wonders.
      "The house at 1414 waits for new families to move in, and sometimes they do, but more often than not the owners abandon their property. Linden Drive grows increasingly desolate, and 1414 clings to the warmth and safety of its inhabitants, sure that it is too well-loved to be left behind."

Now Posted: Quantum Muse - November 2012.
Samantha Berg and the Petrifying Pipelines by James Turnbull. Alternative.
     "Has an old friend become a new foe? Why are teenage girls going missing? And can Berg keep her electricity fairy happy? Find out all this, and more!"
 Grasshopper Dreams by Robert Hunter. Alternative.
     "Noses were crinkled, then relaxed. In death as in life Pansy Graham was preceded by a clinging aura Eurydice Wyndham Pease, known as Dicey, identified as the yellow bar soap provided by the Daughters of Milo. That their charge might be dead had yet to appear on the cork board down at the Red and White, where funeral home postings reported who was dead and who wasn’t."
 Transgression by John Henson Webb. Alternative.
     "Some things should not be forgotten. Not all nightmares vanish in the morning; not all nursery rhymes are pleasant."
 OZ by Michele Dutcher. Science Fiction.
     "A mother watches her son enlist in a service branch, but can he make it back to her in time?"

E-Books
At Free E-Books Daily:

• Lovely Frights for Lonely Nights by Blythe Ayne. Paranormal. Horror.
• Nick the Lolt by Anthony Briggs. YA Fantasy.
• Dreamweaver by Tiffinie Helmer. Paranormal Romance.

At Smashwords:

• "There Shouldn't Be Elves In Hammertown" by Stephen Dorning. Fantasy. 10k.
• "A Day in a Life in After World: Brach" by Eric Johnson. Post-Apoc. 3k.
• "Howler King" by J. Lloyd Morgan. Paranormal. 5k.
• "Hero's Break" by Paul Ross. Superhero. 7k.
• "The Lady Of The Lighthouse" by Adrien Leduc. Ghost. 5k.
• "A Doll in the Garden" by Jack Forge. Horror. 4k.
• "Clowns on Parade" by Salubrious Farlight. Horror. 5k.
• "Black Water" by Gene Denham. Ghost. 1k.
• "Soul Walker" by Per Holbo. Weird. 3k.
• "Dice, Drink, and Ghosts" by Jake Murphy. Paranormal 2k.
• "Children of the Narlow" by Joy Johnson. Science Fiction. 5k.

Audio Fiction
At  Clarkesworld: "(To See the Other) Whole Against the Sky" by E. Catherine Tobler.
At Escape Pod: "Springtime for Deathtraps" by Marjorie James. Science Fiction.
     "The building sat in a small clearing in the jungle, its stone walls radiating solidity and the midday heat. Giant statues of warrior-gods crushing skulls beneath their feet flanked the doorway. Xnab looked from the ornately carved keyhole to his customer and back again."

Old Time Radio
At Relic Radio: Dracula by CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Horror.
At Relic Radio: "The Lights" by X Minus One. Science Fiction.

Comics
At Digital Comics Museum: Weird Adventure #2. Horror.

Other Genres
E-Book at Free E-Books Daily: Old Billy by John Nance Garner. Western.
E-Book at Free E-Books Daily: Ghost Cabin by Dakota Lee. Western.

Four Free Magazines and Other Free Fantasy, SF, Horror, and RPG Items

Read 'till your eyes bleed, then listen to the cool free audio-fiction. There's another batch of cool freebies today. Two great SF magazines, including a story by the impressively prolific Cat Rambo, and many other good science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. More good audio, including the 259th Beam Me Up and audio versions of Clarkesworld and Fantasy Magazine stories. Many flash fiction stories, two gaming 'zines, and more gaming items. Even more item than sentence fragments today.








Issue #56 of Clarkesworld is up with:

"Whose Face This Is I Do Not Know" by Cat Rambo.
"He hesitates, staring at me as though he were hungry, as though I were reminding him of someone. 'Any other odd... episodes?'"

"The Architect of Heaven" by Jason K. Chapman.
"She smiles and tells him of the new star in Terranova's sky. It's the rich blue color of a chipchip's egg—a bright dot pointing back toward Earth."

As well as non-fiction and audio fiction.


Issue #8 of Redstone Science Fiction is up with:
"Party, with Echoes" by Patty Jansen.
"He fins past the sub’s flank in languid strokes. Yeah, he has done this before. Some of the tension inside her dissipates."

"Zeno’s Arrow" by R.L. Ferguson.
"Groggy from the hibernation chamber, shivering as the infrared heaters bathed my skin, Andrea spoke to me about communications lasers, data decay, and crew suicides."

"Ask Not" by Bonnie McDaniel.
“Come on in.” I pointed to the couch. “I don’t have much use for salespeople, and you’ve interrupted my canning. You have five minutes.”

As well as upcoming non-fiction.

@Fantasy Magazine: "Solo Piano" by Genevieve Valentine, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
"The windows go first, from enemy fire and bad frosts. Then the moss and ivy move in, and the birds, and the rain. At last, the brick begins to crumble. By the time the Circus comes, it will be a ruin."

@Kasma ScienceFiction: "To Be the Queen" by Shelly Li.
"She sprawls her wings across the milky white netting, her body stretched across two poles, brown and spindly and rooted into the asphalt ground. A thin curtain of wax covers her face."

@Philippine Genre Stories: "The Departure" by Marianne Villanueva. Horror.
"That morning, when they awoke, Julietta had a bad feeling. Nothing she could put a figure on, just a feeling."

@Mind Flights: "The Parachute" by Shelly Li. SF.
"Rain falls gently around me, shading a second layer of grey over the world. Perhaps in a place like this, it is better that not a ray of sunshine penetrates the tight blanket of smog. Better that God cannot see what is happening here, what I am doing. "

@Smashwords: "Ablaze" by Harsh Thakar. Dark. [via Dark Valentine].
"A story loosely based on the story of Rumplestiltskin. This book tells a story of a young woman Mia as she encounters a will-o-wisp who wishes to take her child. "

@Smashwords: "Cold Stairs" by Mark Petersen. Ghost. [via Dark Valentine].
"Winner of an Honorable Mention Virginia Tech Literary Award, this story takes place in Eastern Kentucky and is based on what might have been a true ghost story."

Two free e-books (links and details at SF Signal).

• Zendegi by Greg Egan
• Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogan

Classic SF
@Project Gutenberg: The Secret of the Ninth Planet by Donald A. Wolheim (1959).
"On the morning that the theft of the solar system's sunlight began, Burl Denning woke up in his sleeping bag in the Andes, feeling again the exhilaration of the keen, rarefied, mountain air. He glanced at the still sleeping forms of his father and the other members of the Denning expedition, and sat up, enjoying the first rays of the early morning."


Serial Fiction
@Ray Gun Revival: "The Princess – part one" by Robert Mance.
@Kat and Mouse: "Payback - Part Seven" by Abner Senires.







@Beam Me Up: Episode #259, with "Heretics Son" by T. Joseph Dunham and "With Stealth and Grace" by Mikal Trimm.
"Two new authors this week! Mikal Trimm and T. Joseph Dunham. Mr. Trimm’s story is a powerful short story of a hunter and its prey."

@Clarkesworld: "Whose Face This Is I Do Not Know" by Cat Rambo, read by Kate Baker.

@Fantasy Magazine: "Solo Piano" by Genevieve Valentine, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

@PodCastle: Miniature #62 "The Transfiguration of Maria Luisa Ortega" by E. Lily Yu, read by Julia Rios.
"The first time María Luisa Ortega cursed, after stabbing herself with a pair of steel tweezers, she turned into a sea urchin."

@Lovecraft eZine: Two more classic Lovecraft audios, "The Lurking Fear" and "The Haunter of the Dark."
"There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear."

@Misfits Audio: "Stranger Stories - This Guy Walks Into a Bar" by Mike Murphy, performed by a full cast.
"A confused man walks into a bar. How, he wonders, can what he sees be true?"

Serial Audio
@The author's site: "The Starter - Episode 12" by Scott Sigler.
"Today's episode finds Quentin suffering through practice with the offensive line, sacked over and over in his red "no touch" jersey."

@Decoder Ring Theater: The Red Panda - Episode 71 "All The King's Men"
"For years now, the country has been haunted by an enemy as elusive as any ghost. The head of a network working to weaken our war effort and prepared to devestate our defences at a stroke when the opportunity presents itself for their Nazi masters to strike."

@Triplanetary: Classic Superman action in "Atom Man in Metropolis" 1-4.
"Superman lies near death, struck down by the deadly radioactive blasts of the Atom Man"








@Daily Science Fiction: "Necessities" by Nathaniel Matthews Lee.
@Flashes in the Dark: "The Cold of the Open Sky" by Lori Titus.
@Flashes in the Dark: "Operators Standing By" By Kristina R. Mosley.
@365 tomorrows: "Birthday Suit" by Ryan Swiers.
@365 tomorrows: "Death Dance" by John Eric Vona.
@Weirdyear: "Without a Utility Belt" by Gayle Francis Moffet.
@Eschatology: "Summit" by Erika Wilson.
@Quantum Muse: "Alone Beside a Methane Sea" by Roi Czechvala.
@AntipodeanSF:

• "This Alien Landscape" by Chris Large.
• "7 Bullets" by Jules Carey.
• "Nanobrains" by Kevin J. Phyland.
• "Moving House" by Antoinette Rydyr.
• "Over Too Soon" by Nicholas J Carter.
• "Somewhere" by Shaun A Saunders.
• "How Technology Threatened My Manhood" by Tod McCoy.
• "Night Falls At The Dream Markets" by Elizabeth Carroll.
• "Old Tidings" by JC Mangold
• "The Genetic Time Traveller" by David Gray.

@DriveThruRPG: Pathways #3, from Rite Publishing.
featuring "a collection of Pathfinder haunts and templates, Ogres, Wolves, and more combining monstrosities, feats and domains, all of it bundled together with a interview with Brandon Hodge"






@DriveThruRPG: Game Geek Issue # 17, from Avalon Game Company.
Free 55 page PDF featuring "all sorts of gaming goodness."








@A Field Guide to Doomsday: [Monster] "Xottle ('Swamp Gobbler')" - Mutant Future.
@ Zalchis: [Monster] "Zaldrim"
@Big Ball of No Fun: [Monsters] "Yamabiko" and "Ziz"
@Sea of Stars: [Magic Item] "Zelus’ Ring"
@The Savage After World: [New Character Race] "Geologian" - Mutant Future.
@A Character For Every Game: [New Class] "Elven Warder Class"
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Deity] Enuli.
@Trollish Delver: [New Monster] "Hexwood Crawler" - Tunnels and Trolls.
@The Land of NOD: [Superhero] "May Day" - Mystery Men.
@Kobold Quarterly: [New Monster] "Slaying Dolls"
@Kobold Quarterly: Valkyrie Names
@DriveThruRPG: "Kingdoms of Legend: Treasure Fleet of Zheng He"
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Magic Items] "Harness of Enlarging" and "Helm of the Dwarf Kings"

Free Magazines, Fiction, Audio Fiction, and Gaming.

A ton of free fiction, audio, and gaming items today!





Fiction
Magazines
Issue #55 of Clarkesworld is now online with,

Fiction
"The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu.
"For longer than anyone could remember, the village of Yiwei had worn, in its orchards and under its eaves, clay-colored globes of paper that hissed and fizzed with wasps."

"Matchmaker" by Erin M. Hartshorn.
"Miss Berazazz could've been Jewish, sure. The first kurz had converted only a few years after the kurz and humans had encountered each other out in space. Everyone learned of the Acceptance in Hebrew school, even if no kurz attended synagogue locally."
Non-Fiction
"Linguistics for the World-Builder" by Brit Mandelo
"Same Story with a 21st Century Sensibility: A Conversation with John Scalzi" by Jeremy L. C. Jones

Podcast
Audio Fiction: "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu, read by Kate Baker

Cover Art
"Post-apolacalyptic Fisherman" by Georgi Markov.

[h/t SF Signal]


Issue number three of Lovecraft eZine is online with,

"Introduction to Issue #3" by Mike Davis

"Cockroaches" by Amanda Underwood.
"I shivered as darkness crept predator quiet between the bark, watching us, waiting for us."

"A Meeting on the Trail To Hot Iron" by Joseph S. Pulver.
"Bart looked down on the man. Looked like a man. One not from these parts mind you. His robes looked foreign, Egyptian. I’d seen pharaohs in books. He was wearing robes like a pharaoh. Wearing diamonds and rubies too. A lot of them."

"Things We Are Not" by Brandon H. Bell.
"After my third day in the City a crow alighted next to me on the park bench where I slept, squawking of a wonder at the city aquarium. Its feathers beaded with moisture, its beak dripped blood."

"Descent Into Shadow and Light" by W.H. Pugmire.
"I awakened in my windowless tower, to the smell of ancient books and the worms with which they were infested, and swept the pale winged things from where they had nestled in my coiled hair."

"The Slickens" by Jeremy Russell.
"Then they started to dig them out, but the Department of Environment Quality declared ours not to be ‘fluvially active’ and it was allowed to sit there like a noxious tumor on the farmland. "

"The Town of Autumn: Chapter 1" by Mike Davis.
"As I sit at my desk, there is a bottle of whiskey to the left of my computer, and a gun to the right."



Issue number eight of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is now online with

"Demon Song" by A. R. Williams.
"Supernatural samurai slices some serious adventure. (Sorry, A. R. — we couldn’t resist!) Seriously, good readers, check this one out: a vengeful samurai learns a lesson from the grave . . . but just whose grave is it?"

"The Dome of Florence part I" by Richard Marsden.
"Way back in HFQ Issue 1, Richard Marsden’s MAN OF MOLDANIA was the first story we accepted — and he continues his firsts with us by delivering our first novella, this coming to you in an historical fantasy in two parts. With architecture, alchemy, and papal wizards, who could have guessed the Inquisition would be so fun!"

"The Baroness Drefelin" by David Pilling.
"Another fine offering from a writer previously published at HFQ, this one bringing some much overdo levity to our fictions. When it comes to unrequited love, we reckon there are many more bad ways than good to, um, bear the jilt. We like the way the hero in this tale goes about it. "

As well as art by Garrett Hanna and poetry by David Sklar, Keith Kennedy, and Jason M. Waltz.

Single Stories
@Fantasy Magazine: "Choose Your Own Adventure" by Kat Howard.
"Are you brave enough to begin? If so, turn to page 1. If not, remain safe. Close the book and return it to the shelf. No one will think any less of you. " In online text and MP3 audio formats. (and don't miss the author's interview here and an article "Choosing Your Own Adventure" by Molly Tanzer.)


@Daily Science Fiction: "Words on a Page" by Allison Starkweather.
"He flinches at the touch of sharp, cool metal against his shoulder. Only once and then he stills, holding himself motionless for her. She begins slowly, dragging the nib over his skin, leaving tracks that chill him as the ink dries."

@The Canadian Science Fiction Review: "Matthias Comes Home From the War" by Bev Vincent.
"After he returns from his tour of duty, Matthias notices differences everywhere he looks. Some barely discernible, but others too insidious to ignore. So much has changed, it seems impossible that it has been just two years."

@Subterranean Press: "Water to Wine" by Mary Robinette Kowal.
"Water sprayed out from beneath the wine barrel, carrying the faint stink of sulfur with it. I suppose it’s crazy to have a fondness for the smell of rotten eggs, but that means cleanliness in the wine industry. I shut off the hose and wrestled the barrel off the ancient Gamma-Jet, rolling it to the racks outside the cellar door so it could drain in the sun."

@Suvudu: "The Second Kalandar's Tale" by Francis Marion Soty, from the March/April issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine [via SF Signal]
"A story of the encounters between Hassain Mohammed al-Shehr, a Prince of Arabia, and theIfrit Jirjaris bin Rajmus, in A Thousand Nights and A Night"


Serial Fiction
@Kat and Mouse: Guns for Hire: "Payback - Part Three" by Abner Senires.
"The headless body slumped back against the BMW's front grill, splashing blood and brains across the hood and windshield."

Classic SF
"Human Error" by Raymond F Jones, from If: Worlds of Science Fiction (April 1956)
"The government was spending a billion dollars to convince the human race that men ought to be ashamed to be men—instead of errorless, cybernetics machines. But they forgot that an errorless man is a dead man...."

In ebook downloads at Munseys and Project Gutenberg.


"Security Risk" by Ed M. Clinton, Jr. From If: Worlds of Science Fiction (Feb. 1958.)
"It was a touchable touching an untouchable. Both scientist and general were doing their own version of right...."

In ebook downloads at Project Gutenberg and Manybooks. [h/t Triplanetary].


@Two-Fisted Tales of True-Life Weird Romance!: "Judas Ram" by Sam Merwin Jr. From Galaxy Science Fiction (Dec. 1950).
"The house was furnished with all luxeries, including women. If it only had a lease that could be broken --" In JPEG scans.


Flash Fiction



@Flashes in the Dark: "Behind the Gaze" by Katie Prince.
@Flashes in the Dark: "What Lies ‘Neath Lake Leona" by Rosemary Youngblood.
@Flashes in the Dark: "Willpower" by Paul Kardos.
@365 tomorrows: "Communal Thought" by Patrick Condon.
@365 tomorrows: "The Light of other Universes" by Jeremy Wickins.
@365 tomorrows: "Milk Dipped Eyes" by Richard Chins.
@The New Flesh: "Frankincence, Gold & Myrrh" by Joseph M. Bouthiette, Jr.
@Every Day Fiction: "Up the Stairs" by John Lander.
@Mindflights: "Mirror, Mirror!" by Eleni Konstantine.


Audio Fiction





@Beam Me Up: Episode #255 featuring "Ghosts in My Head" by Cory Doctorow and a Libravox recording of C. H. Thames’ "Prison of a Billion Years."

@Cthulhu: "The Coastal Circuit" by D.S. Carmon.
"a great bit of mythos story telling."

@LibriVox: Tom Swift in Captivity by Victor Appleton, read by Tom Weiss.
Classic but very dated children's adventure.


Serial Audio:
@The author's website: The Starter Episode #8 by Scott Sigler.
"Quentin's efforts to take full control of the Krakens run into obstacles from an unexpected source. He finally gets to try out his receivers as the Krakens prepare for opening day."

@The Drama Pod: Journey to the Centre of the Earth Part Eight by The Drama Pod.
Part eight of Jules Verne's classic novel.

@Triplanetary: The classic radio serial The Adventures of Superman is being replayed at triplanetary. Now up to The Atom Man (parts 5-8) - Parts 1-4 are here.
"Superman will finally face a worthy adversary. First he must race to stop the mad scientist Der Teufel from completing his evil scheme to create an Atom Man, a kryptonite powered supervillain."

Gaming
@DriveThruRPG: Game Geek #16. A free 53 page PDF download featuring many Pathfinder items, comics, and fiction "She-Wolf" by Megan Robertson. [free membership required]


And Quid Novi? Perilous Penguin Edition an 8 page PDF of Pathfinder material. [free membership required]




@Mongoose Publishing: In a free PDF download Signs & Portents #91. Highlights include,

RuneQuest: A complete Gloranthan adventure that sees the players duelling with agents of Chaos, A cult designed around swordplay, and A range of shrubs, trees and other plants that will both benefit and hinder your players.

Traveller: A series of plot hooks that will get your players working for charity. They won't want to talk about it though..., and A complete adventure that will set the players against the latest entertainment craze.

Lone Wolf: The final part of the City of Lof.


@The Land of NOD: Monsters of Mu-Pan I - five monsters for the Mu-Pan setting (easily compatible with early edition D&D and retro-clones)




Small But Cool Gaming Items
@The Land of NOD: [encounter] "Mu-Pan - Encounter XVII"
@1d8: [Online Gaming Tool] "Fantasy Business Name Generator" [via Gothridge Manor which expands on two sample names here]
@1d8: [New Monster] Cadaver Dog.
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Magic Item] Cage Arrows.
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Magic Item] Elixir of Halfheartedness.
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Spell] Rain of Birds.
@Blog on the Borderlands: [New Magic Item] Sandals of the Four Winds.
@Sea of Stars: [New Magic Items] Aphodite’s Anklet, Bellona’s Horn and Sword, and Cloacina’s Amulet.