More Is Better Than Less

 A bonus links post today, with some more good free stuff.





Fiction and E-Books
At Author's Site: “Dark Rides” by Rachel Caine. Horror. [Via SF Signal]
     "There’s something deeply creepy about an unlit Ferris wheel in the dark. It looks like the skeletal remains of something large that once rolled across the earth scooping up screaming victims in its buckety jaws"
At Author's Site: "Pandora’s Box: A Spade/Paladin Conundrum" by: Kristine Kathryn Rusch. (until 23 Oct. 2012). Mystery.
      “I think we should call the bomb squad,” said Phil, the youngest, thinnest member of con security, so thin I had no idea how anyone could ever feel threatened by him. He was new.
 At Mad Scientist Journal: "Coda" by Eryk Pruitt. Science Fiction.  [Via SF Signal]
     "The specimen is Sam Tuley, chosen not just for his overzealous sex drive, penchant for alcohol and violence, and inability to make the most of a second chance, but rather because, try as he might, he will forever be damned to a hospital bed with tubes going in and out of him."

At Free eBooks Daily:

• Deadlocked by A.R. Wise. Horror. Zombies.
• Darkhouse by Karina Halle. YA Horror.
• The Burning City by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Fantasy.
• Hellbender by Jason Jack Miller. Fantasy/Horror.
• Everard by Chautona Havig . Fantasy.

Via Pixel of Ink:

• Dreams Unleashed by Linda Hawley. Near Future SF.
• Cassidy Jones and the Secret Formula by Elise Stoke. YA Adventure.

At Smashwords:

• "Buck Johnson: Dragon Wrangler" by Wyatt McLaren. Fantasy. 4k.
• "Emily Dickinson, Superhero - Vol. 1, Episode 1 - Tomb and Graves" by Eric Nixon. 37k.
• "Magician Number One (Grin the Cheat #3)" by V Moody. Fantasy. 10k.
• "Erth" by Ben Manessis.  Science Fiction. 2k.
• "Solar Cycle 24" by Darrel Bird.  Science Fiction. 15k.
• "Five Byte Stories" by G.D. Tinnams.  Science Fiction. 15k.
• "Beef Stew from Anna Lou" by James Hampton. Horror. 18k.
• "Hunting Comp." by Michael Carter. Science Fiction. 2k.
• "Mantis" by Chrystalla Thoma. Science Fiction. 7k.
• Newt Run by Chad Inglis. Urban Fantasy. 100k.
• "Out of the Darkness" Horror.Ghost. 20k.
• "The New Order (The Board Short Story Series)" by Dorothy Darrow. YA Horror.

Reviewed Free SF At BestScienceFictionStory: "The Dandelion Girl" by Robert F. Young. 1961.

Flash Fiction
At Every Day Fiction: "The Flame" by Garrett Ray Harriman.
At 365  Tomorrows: "Gamberol’s Clock" by Alex Grover. Science Fiction.
At Spinetingler: "First Edition" by Warren Bull. Crime.


Comics
At Atomic Kommie Comics: "Homecoming" Science Fiction.
At Comic Book Catacombs: Jungle Jo in "Valley of the Demon Monsters" Adventure.
At Seduction of the Innocent: "Black Magic in a Slinky Gown" Horror.


Gaming
At Ancient Vaults: Item "Goat’s Cape,"  Spell "Gargantuanize," and Item "Verminstaff."
At Daddy Grognard:  "An Adventure for Every Monster - Succubus" 
At The Land of Nod: "Six Vile Vampires"
At Savage AfterWorld: "Savage Menagerie: Ankylophant" Gamma World.
 

 At QuasarDragon headquarters this morning.

St Patrick's Day

A fairly quiet Thursday, but still some good stuff. See you sometime in the next couple of days.





Fiction
At The Absent Willow Review: Several new SF, Fantasy and Horror stories online.

Fiction:
"Gnawing at the Root" by Kevin Pinkham.
"Enki" by Richard Beland.
"Digital Embrace" by Joe Jablonski.
"Something to be Said for a Little Drama" by Naomi Bergner.
"Falling Upwards" by S.G. Rogers.
"All That Was Left" by Sylvia Hiven.
"Aria" by Chris Stevens.
"Letters to Chelsea" by Oscar Connell.
"Mickie’s Stars" by AJ Brown.
"The Cursed Man" by C.B. lovas.
"The Bridge" by Steven Avila.
"Pins and Needles" by Shannon Marcello.

And an interview with Michael Moorcock.


At Book View Cafe: "The Hermit and the Sidhe" by Judith Tarr.
"In which the last hermit in Ireland meets the last of the Sidhe, and gets rather more than he bargained for."

Online HERE.


At BestScienceFictionStories: a review and link to the recent SF story "In-fall" by Ted Kosmatka.
"Two men have a thought provoking discussion as their ship falls into a black hole."

The review and link are HERE.

Classic SF
At Marooned - Science Fiction & Fantasy books on Mars: "The Foreign Legion of Mars" by Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. from Amazing Stories (May 1939).
"IT happened when I was just a youngster, holding down a trading station on Mars. I was a sergeant in the Alien Legion at the time. You remember the Legion. Scum of the cosmos, picked up in gutters throughout the Solar System, and supposed to keep the Martians in order while our traders stole the fillings out of their teeth."


In PDF download HERE.



Flash Fiction
@Daily Science Fiction: "Tuna Fish" by Andrew Kaye.
@Every Day Fiction: "The Next Ice Age" by Paul Friesen.
@Flashes in the Dark: "Help." by Jim Bronyaur.
@Flashes in the Dark:"Of Darkness and Memory"By Lori Titus.
@365 tomorrows: "Traveler" by Duncan Shields.

Video
At The Internet Archive: Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules (1962).

"Wandering strongman Maxxus comes upon two warring tribes, the Sun worshipers and the Moon worshipers. He saves the leader of the Sun tribe from a sea monster, then later on when the Moon tribe attacks and kidnaps the Sun tribe's women, they call upon Maxxus for help." - IMDb.


In low-res downloads HERE.


Gaming
At RPGNow: "Escape From Khosht" by Fabled Worlds.

"Everything had gone according to plan. The Eye of the Beast---a cut, polished diamond the size of a hill giant's fist rests in your hands. It is worth 200,000 gold pieces! Escape from Khosht is a solitaire adventure written by Andrew Greene, and illustrated by J. Freels for the Tunnels and Trolls game system."

In PDF Download HERE (free membership required).



Small, But Cool, Gaming Freebies
@Blog on the Borderlands: [New Monster] Demon Boar.
@Blog on the Borderlands: [New Magic Item] Ring of Darkness.
@Axe & Hammer: [Price Guide] Paying the Troops: Cavalry.
@Axe & Hammer: [Price Guide] Paying the Troops: Footmen.
@A Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons and Dragons: [New Magic Item] Greysoul Shards.
@The Land of NOD: [Encounters] Mu-Pan - Encounter IV/V.
@Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets: [New Magic Item] Conjuring Flute of Korabal.


Comics
At Savage Tales: Wulf the Barbarian #4: "Death-Night in the Darkling Forest!"

Atlas Comics' answer to Conan online HERE.


Also online are issues one, two, and three.


Noir/Suspense
At Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: Agatha nominees "So Much in Common" by Mary Jane Maffini.
"Luck was with her that day or Willa Bennington might never have encountered Cliff and Leann Capshaw at the Towne Center Gourmet"

Online HERE.

And "The Green Cross" by Elizabeth Zelvin.
"I had never thought to be a sailor, but my father knew the admiral."

Online HERE.

Audio
@CrimeWAV: Mark Coggins - The Immortal Game - Episode Five.
@SFFAudio: "The McWilliamses And The Burglar Alarm" by Mark Twain.

Comics
@Two-Fisted Tales of True-Life Weird Romance: "Screenplay For Murder" from Crime Illustrated. #. 2.
@The Horrors of it All: "The Rose!" from Spellbound #16.
@ Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine:"A Short Step to Oblivion" from Suspense Detective #1

St. Patrick's Day
In honor of the day, a short fantasy poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.

"The Stolen Child"

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

Lovecraft, Leinster, Ellison, Rusch, and More

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (Those under 35 can Gooogle what that means) another day of good free items from around the internet. Unusual today, an irregular category Noir/Mystery for those whose tastes extend beyond the big four of SF, Fantasy, Horror, and Adventure.




E-Fiction
The Lovecraft eZine has its second monthly issue out with "Lovecraftian fiction ... about that discovery that the universe is not as it seems, that there are terrible, unimaginable things out there that care not a whit about mankind"

"Some Distant Baying Sound" by W.H. Pugmire
"A Different Morecambe" by Simon Kurt Unsworth
"False Light" by Adrian Chamberlin
and "Allure" by Josh Wagner


All online HERE.

Get this one quick, it's only up through this Sunday! At the author's website, "Dragon Slayer" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. [via Free SF Reader]
"Fifteen dragons have died in less than a century. Rumaad, a different kind of dragon, collects information about the killings the way some dragons collect jewels. So he’s perfectly suited to see the differences in the latest crime scene, the murder of a dragon he knows all too well. What he sees convinces him something has changed in his world—and not for the best."

Online HERE.


A pair of classic stories at Project Gutenberg via Triplanetary.

"Polaris of the Snows" by Charles B. Stilson (1915) Best described as a "snowy Tarzan." Available online and in e-book download HERE.


"The Mad Planet" by Murray Leinster (1920) An early story by one of the greats. In the future, humanity struggles against nature gone wild. Available online and in e-book download HERE.



Phoenix Pick is continuing their "Free eBook-a-Month" promotion, this month with Paul Cooks' Fortress on the Sun

"The Fortress refers to Ra, which is a 21st century prison camp that also acts as facility for harvesting metals--from the Sun. The prisoners have all been banished here for extreme crimes, but none of them remembers anything from their past."

More details and instructions at SF Signal HERE.



At Realms of Fantasy, Nebula nominee "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" by Harlan Ellison.
"I created a tiny man. It was very hard work. It took me a long time. But I did it, finally: he was five inches tall. Tiny; he was very tiny. And creating him, the creating of him, it seemed an awfully good idea at the time."


Online HERE. [via Variety SF]



A special link to Free SF Reader, an incredible source of free SF, fantasy, and horror. Indeed, it's so good that it's easy to take for granted.

A must see regularly site HERE.


Audio Fiction
At StarShipSofa, episode #178. Featuring readings of three stories nominated for the BSFA short story award.
"Flying in the Face of God" by Nina Allan
"The Shipmaker" by Aliette de Bodard
and "Arrhythmia" by’ Neil Williamson

Streaming and in MP3 download HERE.


Gaming
At DriveThruRPG, Game Geek #15. Avalon Games free fantasy gaming magazine featuring pathfinder compatible magic items and more.




In PDf download HERE. (free membership required)




At DriveThruRPG, Infinite Horizons #1
Originaly planned "to be all about Infinite Futures" Avalon Games Pathfinder compatible SF rpg, but instead supporting "all sort of games and game systems." "Each issue is packed full of great gaming, fiction, comics and review."


In PDf download HERE. (free membership required)




Comics
At Four-Color Shadows, "Doc Savage: The Crystal Monsters" from 1948.
The art is a little bland but a Doc Savage story is always cool.



Online HERE.



Mystery/Noir
At Spinetingler, "The Columbian" by Fred Snyder.
"The detective smeared the sweat on his forehead. 'Your brother’s in trouble again.'" Online HERE.

and "Less Than Living" by Jason Duke. "Saturday night I watch Postcards From The Edge, holding an empty fifth of Wild Turkey to my chest like it’s my life. Commercials interrupt every seven minutes because the movie is a heavily edited for television version run on the Lifetime channel." Online HERE.


At Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Podcast episode 18, "Award-winning mystery and Western fiction writer Bill Crider ... reading his story 'The Case of the Headless Man,' from the March 1998 EQMM."



In MP3 download HERE.






Other Coolness
The Voice of Middle Earth is an unusual podcast that muses "upon all things Tolkien and Middle Earth, and create music mixes that reflect the spirit of The Lord of the Rings." Pretty cool.

In MP3 downloads here, but the latest five episodes are only HERE [via Triplanetary]

Various Cool Free Fiction

Some varied goodies today, so there is likely something for most tastes.

E-Fiction

John DeNardo at SF Signal listed quite a bit of free fiction yesterday and rather than reinvent the wheel and post several links with a "via SF Signal," the SF Signal post is HERE.






Inner City by Scott Norton is a free online Sci/Fi/Adventure/Romance novel.
"The cities have gated their walls to lock all else out. Those in rural areas have been reduced to savages eeking out a primitive existence. When a seven year old Callen Carrus, a boy from the city, faces a personal crises and runs away, he's chased outside the city walls. What happens to him there will set him on a quest that will lead to him risking his life in search of answers."

Online HERE.




And DargonZine has its latest issue, Volume 23 Number 4, online with, "Hubris" by D'Artagnon Wells and "The Far Patrol" by Liam Donahue.

Online HERE.




Audio Fiction

At Escape Pod, "Endosymbiont" by Blake Charlton, read by Mur Lafferty.
"Stephanie started to protest but then stopped. A terrifying memory flashed through her mind. “Mom said they might take me to a hospital for the dead.” She didn’t know what that meant but the memory was clear. 'She said you’d keep me here to fool me into thinking I’m still alive.'"

A very interesting story, but one that will tear your heart out.

Streaming and in MP3 download HERE.


At Beam Me Up, part two of Nancy Fulda’s “Knowing Neither Kith….”
"The tension begins to really build as a mysterious evil preys on kith and kin alike. It looks as though evil will once again be freed to destroy the people. The obligation to save everyone falls on a reluctant outcast with little interest in saving the very people who have rejected her in the past."

Streaming and in MP3 download HERE. (Part one is here)


And a couple of free professional, mystery podcasts. Mystery isn't really a focus of QuasarDragon, but it is a kindred genre with a tiny bit of overlap. And the odds are at least a few QD readers like this genre.


Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine has several free audio fiction stories available online.

For streaming and MP3 downloads HERE.




And Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine also has a free podcast of mystery audio fiction.



Streaming and in MP3 download HERE. (Found via SFFAudio)





Comics

At The Horrors of it All, "The Halls of Horror" from Adventures into the Unknown #18 (April 1951).

Classic pre-code horror


Online HERE.





At Grantbridge Street & Other Misadventures, "The Magic Hammer" a 1957 Jack Kirby story of Thor well before the Marvel character of the same name.



Online HERE. (warning, although this comic is G rated, there are R rated posts there.)



At The Comic Book Catacombs, a pure 1950's skiffy story "Mission to Malooka" from Amazing Adventures (Oct 1951).


Online HERE.





At Steve Ditko Comics Weblog, a three-page short sf story called "Automata Ultima"


Online HERE.




At Diversions of the Groovy Kind a cool adaptation of John W. Campbell's classic short story "Who Goes There?" on which The Thing From Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982) are based. Great SF/Horror.

Online HERE.



Other

At DanMeth.Com "The Fantasy World Map #12 In A Series of Pop-Cultural Charts" an interesting, "accurate map of the entire fantasy world." Unusual choices make it more interesting than I would have expected. Lidsville?



Online HERE (via Tor.com)