Free Audio Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, and More

There's some very good audio fiction for you today. Three of the usual suspects (DrabbleCast, PodCastle, and StarShipSofa) all have great free stories for you today. And there's more great audio at SFFaudio and LibriVox!

And there's also some terrific text fiction too. Nightmare Magazine has another great free story, and there are flash fiction stories at the usual cool sites. And lastly, Project Gutenberg has two more issues of Futuria Fantastic, Ray Bradbury's classic fanzine. More later today.

[Art for Sintram and his Companions, linked below]

Fiction
• At Nightmare Magazine: "Summer" by Tananarive Due. Horror.

      "During the baby’s nap-time, a housefly buzzed past the new screen somehow, and landed on Danielle’s wrist while she was reading Us Weekly on the back porch. With the Okeepechee swamp so close, mosquitoes and flies take over Graceville in summer. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said."

Fanzines
• At Project Gutenberg: Futuria Fantastic Winter 1940 and Spring 1940. Science Fiction. Edited by Ray Bradbury.

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Cries of the Dead and Dying" by Sarah Goslee.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Alternate Ending" by Steve Husk. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Damn Kids" by Roi R. Czechvala. Science Fiction.
• At Yesteryear Fiction: "Last Rites" by Gary Hewitt. Fantasy.

Audio
• At DrabbleCast: "Little Grace of the House of Death" by Eugie Foster. Fantasy. Horror.
      "The niece of King Death had not yet chosen a name.  She was the only daughter and youngest child of Death’s sister, Merciful Grace, and everyone still called her by her baby name, Little Grace…"
 
• At LibriVox: "Sintram and his Companions" by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. Fantasy.
     "a German Romantic writer whose stories were filled with knights, damsels in distress, evil enchantments, and the struggle of good against overpowering evil. 'My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.' Fouque blends the Romantic love for nature and ancient chivalry while telling a powerful story about a young man who yearns for that which he can never attain."

• At PodCastle: "Catching the Spirit" by Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt. Fantasy.
      "Pretty much nobody knows how, exactly, the Christmas Spirit started to spread. One theory goes that a child in Meridian Mississippi was bitten by an infected reindeer, and then spread the plague at her school Christmas pageant"

• At SFFaudio: "Plotting For Perfection" by Tim Prasil. Science Fiction.
      "A photographer on assignment meets his future love, an astrophysicist, and then is visited by photographs of their future life together."     

• At StarShipSofa: "The Boneless One Part 1" by Alec Nevala-Lee. Science Fiction.
      As Trip sat up, Ray was already heading for the stateroom door. A graying beard, grown over the past year, had softened Ray’s famously intense features, but his blue eyes remained focused and bright, and they caught Trip’s attention at once. If nothing else, it was the first time he had ever been awakened by a billionaire. “Come on,” Ray said. “You’ll want your notebook and camera.”

Ephemeral Links - Enduring Freebies and News

Quite a few interesting items, including several e-books, some eclectic news items that might be of interest and a three part CBC podcast about three orders of Medieval knights. It's been up awhile, but it's new to me.

 

 [Art From "The Sword Brothers – Knights Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights"  below]




E-Books
Via Pixel of Ink: Cerulean Isle by G.M. Browning. Fantasy. Pirates.

At Free eBooks Daily:

• Fast-Tracked by Tracy Rozzlynn. YA Fantasy.
• You Are Not a Planet and Other Stories by Sean Manseau. Speculative Fiction.
• Verita by Tracy Rozzlynn. YA Science Fiction.
• Yseult by Ruth Nestvold. Historical Fantasy.
• First Crossing by Tyla Grey. Paranormal Romance.

At Smashwords:

• "My Curious Ocean" by Ulf Wolf. Science Fiction. 9k.
• "The Royal Runaway" by Rory Mackay. Fantasy. 9k.
• "The Memory of a Salt Shaker" by Bernard Cox. Contemporary Fantasy. 5k.
• "Resurrection #1" by Tim  Curran. Horror. 22k.
• "Twas The Night Before Christmas (When The Aliens Appeared)" by Michael Carter. Sci-Fi Poem. 1k.
• "Death and Taxes" by Sansoucy Kathenor. Speculative Fiction. 21k.

Audio Non-Fiction
At Medievalists.Net: "The Sword Brothers – Knights Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights"
      "Life in the eleventh century was nasty, brutish and short. Most people lived and died a few miles from where they were born. Strangers were suspect and danger lurked everywhere. Who was in charge was a matter of opinion. Barons and local chiefs ruled as they wished. Those who would be king faced a skeptical and hostile world…we take the modern world for granted with its more or less stable patchwork of nation-states, each with its body of law and governance."

Science News

• "Quantum teleportation between atomic ensembles demonstrated for first time"
• "Astronomers pin down origins of 'mile markers' for expansion of universe"
• "Mars and Earth: Similar Building Blocks"
• "'Super-Jupiter' Around Massive Star Discovered"
• "A Tsunami in Switzerland? Lake Evidence Says Yes"
• "Instrument Delivered for NASA's Upcoming Mars Mission"
• "Born-Again Star Shows the Fate of Our Solar System"
• "Finding a direction of time in exotic particle transformations"
• "Private Moon Race May Spark Lunar 'Water Rush'"
• "Henley hit by 'mutant super rat' invasion"

Paleontology/History News

• "After 121 years, identification of 'grave robber' fossil solves a paleontological enigma"
• "Mary Rose: scientists identify shipwreck's archers"
• "An 11th-Century Scandal"
• "Civilization versus Barbarians? Fortification Techniques and Politics in Carolingian and Ottonian Borderlands"
• "Haraldr the Hard-Ruler and his poets"

Fantasy Films News

• "The amazing Middle-earth art of John Cockshaw"
• "Philippa Boyens: film powerplayer"
• "Watch a tantalising 7.5 minute fan-made Hobbit trailer and TV spot compilation!"
• "Oz The Great And Powerful – A MUST SEE film!"
• "Oz The Great and Powerful’s second trailer has been released [Movie Trailer]"
• "'Breaking Dawn' Ends 'Twilight' Franchise on Strong Note"

Freebies to start the weekend.

More good freebies. There are quite a few very good audio fiction stories today, as well as very good fiction, flash fiction, and more.  Back soonish.




Fiction
At Cosmos: "Anterior View" by Brenda Kalt. Science Fiction.
      "The display was impressive, but the box was heavy – full of data leaves, potentially a full view. Of something."

At Daily Science Fiction:  "Phone Booth" by Holli Mintzer. Science Fiction.
      "There aren't a lot of zeppelins these days to anchor at them, just like there aren't many ships in the harbor, but the masts are still there: two or three big freight elevators apiece, caged in a lattice of iron struts and steel cable."

At Project Gutenberg:  The Scarlet Plague by Jack London.  Science Fiction. 1912/1915.
      "is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel written by Jack London and originally published in London Magazine in 1912." Wikipedia.

At Tor.com:  "A Ghost Story" by Mark Twain. 1888. Horror.
      "The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break."

Reviewed at Variety SF: "Tumithak of the Corridors" by Charles R Tanner. Science Fiction. 1932.
      "It is only within the last few years that archeological science has reached a point where we may begin to appreciate the astonishing advances in science that our ancestors had achieved before the Great Invasion"

Flash
At 365 tomorrows: "Fallen" by Steve Smith. Science Fiction.
At Weirdyear: "Skull Collection" by Rob Bliss.

Audio
At Cast of Wonders: "The Great Game, Part 5 – The Dark Continent" by James Vachowski. YA.
      "Light a lamp, child, and be quick about it. The day is fading, and my eyes are not what they once were. Ah, that’s the rub. This room closes in when night falls."

At Classic Tales Podcast: Carmilla part 4 of 4 by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
      "The General’s story comes to its horrifying conclusion, and the mystery of Carmilla is finally unearthed" Also parts one, two, and three.

At Escape Pod:  "Lion Dance" by Vylar Kaftan. Science Fiction.
      "Matt was loud–even a flu mask didn’t muffle his bellowing.  I swear, even though every restaurant in San Francisco Chinatown had been closed since February, tourists still cruised the streets.  Even a pandemic couldn’t stop them completely."

At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs:  Episode 25 - Tarzan of the Apes. Adventure.
      "Tarzan has fled into the jungle upon discovering that Jane Porter has departed his cabin. Paul D’Arnot remains there. Considering D’Arnot’s helplessness in the jungle, Tarzan reconsiders and starts back for the cabin."

At LibriVox: Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany. Flash Dark Fantasy.
      Horned Pan was still and the dew was on his fur; he had not the look of a live animal. And then they said, "It is true that Pan is dead."

At LibriVox: Tales of Folk and Fairies by Katharine Pyle. Children's Fantasy.
     "Once upon a time there was a poor widow who had only one son, and he was so dear to her that no one could have been dearer. All the same she was obliged to send him out into the world to seek his fortune, for they were so very poor that as long as he stayed at home they were like to starve."

At Pseudopod: "Pumpkinhead" by Rajan Khanna. Horror.
     "He was my employer, but more than that, he was a celebrity, and a close personal friend of the queen. In fact, if it weren’t for his imminent need, she would be the one about to carve this pumpkin for him. He was basically part of the royal family."

At Tales to Terrify: "304 Adolph Hiltler Strasse" by Lavie Tidha.
     "They called him by his real name, which was Hanzi, but they knew who he really was and he knew then that it was over; the knowledge washed him in lethargy, and a sense of futility made him open his hands as if in a shrug, his fat fingers opening limply, sweat dampening his palms."


Old Time Radio
At Relic Radio: "Carmilla" by Columbia Workshop. Horror. 1940.

Other Genres
Audio at Ellery Queen: “Safe and Loft” by John Lutz. Mystery.
Flash at Every Day Stories:  "Uncle Fida’s Eid" by Sarah Crysl Akhtar. Humor.
Flash at Spinetingler: "Pool and Ice Cream" by Peter Anderson.
Text at Project Gutenberg: The Siege of Norwich Castle by Matilda Maria Blake. Historical Fiction. Medieval. 1983.

Wednesday Freebies

Another day of cool free fiction, audio fiction, and comics. Once again, time is not my friend and some good stuff will have to wait until tomorrow, such as most of the comics. Still, there is some great stuff today for reading and listening to. Thanks to SF Signal for letting me know that Beware the Hairy Mango had resumed posting flash audio. So from the land of infinite typos, I "bit" you adieu until tomorrow - likely later in the day.







@Ray Gun Revival: "What the Bullet Sang" by Michael Ehart.

The last cave-in took out Harmon and half our team. Terrell was hit then, but the wound that was killing her came as the Morph was carrying her out. Spalls ran across the Morph’s back, a dotted line broken by where it had held Terrell in a fireman’s carry.

@ChiZine Volume 47, Week 11 is now posted.
"All the Pretty Boys" by Michael Rowe.

"Vulnerable, Dale thought. He smiled. New to the city? Maybe a hustler, or maybe just thinking about it. The kid’s jeans and boots were mall-cheap, and even from a distance Dale’s expert eye detected that the jacket was vinyl."

"Bombay and Mercy Chase the Long Hand" by Daniel A. Rabuzzi.

“He was nine feet tall if he was an inch,” said the sailor sitting in the office of Matchett & Frew, wholesale merchants in the City of London. “Body lean as a needle, with legs like a stork, and his nose . . . well, sirs, I could hardly credit it myself, but his nose was as long as my arm and had three nostrils.”

"Consent" by Nancy Baker.

"The planes come in, running ahead of a freak desert electrical storm. Radios crackle with pleas and threats. From the exhaust trails, the subtle, sweet tang of blood and vengeance drifts down to touch the tarmac."

"Just Like the Ones He Used to Know" by Robert J. Wiersema.

"He remembered the snow falling more than once as they had gone out to find a tree. He remembered driving the logging roads up in the hills around the lake, crammed into the cab of his father’s pick-up truck"

"Lizards" by Brent Hayward.

"This same lady brought two monsters into the world already, one of them boneless kinds that’s kid’s play to put down and another one that came out with teeth and claws and a bad attitude that hadn’t been so easy to send back to the depths these things crawl from. Put an officer in the hospital."

"Military Secrets of the Zionist Enemy" by Lavie Tidhar.

"They say he was still alive when they caught him. They say they did experiments on him. Radiation. All sorts of . . . well. Chemical, biological stuff. They had Iraqi scientists working on him."

"Radio Nowhere" by Douglas Smith.

"She stepped out of the studio and snaked an arm around Liam’s waist, pulling him into a hug. They stood there holding each other for a moment. Breaking it off, she slapped him on the bum and headed towards the door, squeezing past the crammed shelves of vinyl and CD’s. 'Let us rock.'"

"Scenes from the Skoobie Revolution" by Claude Lalumière.

"A nun got on the bus and sat in the empty two-seater facing Correy and Norman. The two white boys had been holding hands, whispering pervy jokes, and giggling, but they instinctively let go of each other as soon as they caught sight of her. "

"The Tale of the Princess and Her Hero" by Robert Boyczuk.

"At the sound the Princess went rigid; her eyes snapped open. Blackness shrouded her. She might as well have been blind. Beneath her cheek the stone flags of her cell were cold and reeked of ancient piss. She lifted her head, grit and the threads of soiled straw clinging to her jaw, and strained to listen. "

Serial Audio
@ScottSigler.com: Tuesday Terror Episode #08 "Perry Dawsey, Are You Okay?" Part 1 of 2. by OJ OgreOregon, performed by Arioch Morningstar. Horror.

"This story is written parallel to Scott [Sigler's] novel Infected" . . . [In it] "alien parasites rain down upon humanity, frequently causing violent psychotic episodes in those whom they contaminate. Perry Dawsey is one of those afflicted by the parasites."

@Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: "Hanuman’s Gift part two" written and narrated by Helen E. H. Madden. Steampunk.

"After hearing Agent Harrison Thorne’s impossible tale of cursed monkeys and undead women Whitby must file away the physical evidence. However it just may be that Hanuman’s Gift was not totally left behind in India, and the Archives are not as boring and safe as he believes."

Flash Audio
@Beware the Hairy Mango: Episode 80 "A Hell of a Licking" by Matthew Sanborn Smith. [weird fiction]

@Atomic Kommie Comics: "The Face on Mars" from Race for the Moon (195?). Sci-Fi.
In a rather cool coincidence(?) a 1950s SF comic book published a story about a face on Mars, roughly two decades before some overzealous and less than rational individuals thrust another silly conspiracy theory upon the world. Maybe they were subconsciously inspired by having read this earlier in there lives. You be the judge.


@Pappy's Golden Age Blogzine: Two stories from Black Knight #3 (1955), "The Crusader" and an unnamed one. Historical / Fantasy.