Tons

Another huge haul of free fiction including a few awesome eZines. Beneath Ceaseless Skies has four new stories as well as audio fiction, four more stories are up at Four Star Quarterly, there's a new issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly up, and a new issue of The Chiaroscuro is now online. There other great fiction and audio fiction including StarShipSofa, PodCastle, Dunesteef, and other greats. And though I'm still not ready to return to regular gaming links, there are four! free gaming eZines linked today, at least a couple of which have fiction.

Illustration from chapter two of the serial "The Box" by Bill Ward.








@AEG: "The Life of the Warrior" by Brian Yoon. Fantasy.

"The last few moments slowed to a crawl. His grip on the tetsubo tightened as the weapon sped faster and faster toward its target. Its target was an ugly face of grey and brown, peppered with ivory bone protrusions that erupted out from random spots. The jade studs of his tetsubo sizzled into the skin on contact and the monster screamed in indignant pain. The weapon splintered and shattered into a thousand pieces even as it crushed its target."

@Daily Science Fiction: "Her Majesty's Guardian" by Donald S. Crankshaw.

"The Council's vote was unanimous," Duke Richard said. He looked ridiculous in a bright yellow doublet. The color would make anyone look foolish, as the other old men seated around the table proved, but its gaiety was especially jarring against Richard's habitual dark expression. "You know your duty, Guardian."

Now Posted: Beneath Ceaseless Skies #79
"The Tiger’s Turn" by Richard Parks. Fantasy.

On the face of the matter I had to agree. While the estate would technically belong to the Imperial Family, I had been assigned the position of steward—quite a handsome income. “Security is the greatest illusion of all, Kenji-san. As for my poverty, it was more of a problem when I was drinking. Don’t mistake me—I am not ungrateful. I am merely puzzled.”

"The Calendar of Saints" by Kat Howard. Fantasy.

“She wasn’t my opponent when I executed her.” I accept mortal commissions; I’ve killed before. Those deaths were honest. Magdalena’s was a waste, and my hands are filthy with it. With a casual nod, from a cleric who knew nothing about the sword-edge of truth, I have been made to feel like a heretic.

"A Spoonful of Salt" by Nicole M. Taylor. Fantasy.

Dr. Benjamin, he was running, running through the rain from one tent to another, trying to save his Story Eater and those pasty wax circles he’s spent so long collecting and, once, he looked up. Mala was sitting there on the top of the sea wall. She wasn’t wearing a rain slicker or even shoes and she was just looking at him like he was a rat, like he was a bug. Like he was something with too many eyes and too many legs and all she wanted to know was what ridiculous thing he was going to do next.

"The Judge's Right Hand" by J.S. Bangs. Fantasy.

A Seraph approaches me with two brands, red‑hot from the coals. The first is Adultery, and it blackens my right cheek. I bite my tongue to swallow the scream. The second is Death, and it sears my forehead. This time I do scream.

Now Posted: The Chiaroscuro - Volume 49 (October–December, 2011).
"In the House of Houses" by Claude Lalumière.

"In the Persian Gulf, there's an island so small and nondescript it appears on no map. Perhaps island is too generous a term for what appears to most eyes as no more than a lifeless bunch of rocks barely rising above sea level."

"La Divina Commedia" by Katherine Mankiller.

"Last time this happened, I was Orpheus."

"Snicker-Snack" by A. D. Bloom.

"He's a meter-tall, dancing fur-belly with mono-molecular edged claws, an embroidered nose, and telomerase chains longer than your arm. He's an unnatural – a custom-coded gene-job, a chromo-tweaked talker gestated in a pickling jar and born full-grown in a pet store. "

"Stars Fell On Alabama" by Jesse Bullington.

"P.J.’s called Peej, an me an he wuz blood brothas from the first time I took Pop’s buck knife out scoutin for Talabands in them hills tween our road an the base. "

@Four Star Quarterly: "Re-Opening Night" by Lou Antonelli.

"This signal wasn't shot through the wormhole. It's spiraling like water down a drain."

@Four Star Quarterly: "Windows" by Gloria Oliver.

"Pressure suit seals--check." Claudia rolled her head in a full circle within her helmet, trying to work out the kinks in her neck muscles. There was always a bit of anticipation and fear whenever she suited up. A cut or leak or malfunction not caught during prep could mean her life.

@Four Star Quarterly: "Closet Enlightenment" by Selina Rosen.

Let me get this straight," she’d replied, making a valiant attempt to keep from reaching for his long neck and strangling him. "You want to go and sit cross-legged with a bunch of other people and listen to some guy with a beard tell you what life’s all about?"

@Four Star Quarterly: "Operation Hell" by Cathy Spangler.

"My supervisor’s voice grated across my psyche like nails on a chalkboard, churning up nausea in my stomach. I resisted banging my head on my monitor. Oh, joy, another wonderful encounter with Hell Supervisor, as I’d dubbed Mr. Turlow."

Now Posted: Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #10


"Queen of the Desert" by Alex Marshall.

"Throughout the endless afternoon he walked the trackless waste. With his coat held above to shield him from the sun’s brutal rays, Derwent toiled — his shadow and his hopes stretching to the empty distance."

"The Workshop of the Lord of the Estuary and the Wages of Heroism" by James Frederick William Rowe.

"It came from the sea, a thing of cold, slime, and teeth. Declaring its presence through murder, it took the lives of three men fishing on the open water before it claimed as its home the estuary at the orifice of the Mor Oirthearach River in Cacke. Ever since it has held this body of water, permitting none to pass but those who pay it in blood."

"Death at the Pass" by Michael R. Fletcher.

"Brushing a thousand years of dirt and rot from his robes, Khraen marvelled at how well preserved he was. Skin, sunken, cracked and grey, adhered to the bones of his long limbs. He’d never been muscular, but now he was downright skeletal."

Serial Fiction
@Paizo: "The Box - Chapter Two: Where the Heart Is" by Bill Ward. Fantasy.

"Noticing the scrutiny, the guard shifted, hooking his thumb into his broad sash, resting his hand close to the curved knife he wore naked and gleaming at his side like the chip-edged cutlass of some Shackles pirate. You had to admire the Sczarni, Kostin thought; they really played the whole Varisian thug act to the hilt."

Audio
@Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "Butterfly" by Garth Upshaw. Fantasy.

"Aidan pulled away from my hand. I could feel his finger bones slip and shift out of place."

@Dunesteef: "The Troop" by Harris Tobias. Science Fiction.

"a tale about a sole human survivor on an alien planet, and his attempts to co-exist wit the native creatures there."

@Journey Into: "The Trial of Thomas Jefferson" by David Barr Kirtley. Science Fiction.

"Time travel allows the UN to go back, capture Hitler, and execute him. But why stop there?"

@PodCastle: "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Eric Luke. Dark.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

@StarShipSofa: "Blood Dauber" by Ted Kosmatka and Michael Poore. Science Fiction.

"Bell trudged up the path, pushing the wheelbarrow before him, already sweating under his brown khaki uniform. He squinted in the bright sunlight, eyeing the exhibits as he ascended the hill: the goats and their pandering; the silly, horny monkeys; the slothful binturongs—all moving to the front of their enclosures as he approached. "

Gaming
Now Posted: Fighting Fantazine #7.

Includes "a new 230 reference adventure Queen of Shades by Paul Struth, a "Fact of Fiction" article devoted to Seas of Blood, and the winning entry of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy competition: Stuart Lloyd's The Curse of Meraki (illustrated by Michael Wolmarans)" and more.

Free membership required on next three.
@DriveThruRPG: Hollenthon - Issue 1

Hollenthon is GROMM's premire magazine, containing new units, painting tutorials, new rules and much more.This first issue covers playing mass battles in the world of GROMM, a new faction of barbarians from the Koldaath Mountains, a painting tutorial and much more!

@DriveThruRPG: Savage Insider Issue 2

includes the following: 3 fleshed out adversaries, 9 new weapons, A Savage Insider exclusive add-on for Beasts & Barbarians, Part 2 of the Crypt of the Crystal Lich fiction series, The first in the Echoes of Rome fiction series, Part 2 of the Deadlands comics series The Kid, A sci-fi adventure, And much more!

@DriveThruRPG: Pathways #8.

"How can you say 'No' to a FREE collection of Pathfinder templates, encounters, feats and domains, and all of it bundled together with a new fiction piece by author David Bain? You'd have to be crazy to turn it down. "

Tuesday Free Fiction

Made it. Didn't know if I was going to be able to post after all. A few good ones here today.











@Lightspeed: "Just Another Perfect Day" by John Varley. (1989) Science Fiction.

"I know how you’re feeling. You wake up alone in a strange room, you get up, you look around, you soon discover that both doors are locked from the outside. It’s enough to unsettle anybody."

@Daily Science Fiction: "Trails" by James Bloomer.

"Clarke stood on the dunes, watching the party coalesce on the beach. Over the horizon, and the grey swell of the ocean, lay Africa. Beyond their borders. Outside. Lands of suffering."

@Pixel of Ink [Kindle]:

• "Personal Demons" by Gregory Lamberson. Horror.
• "The Strange Case of Finley Jayne" by Kady Cross. Fantasy. YA.
• "The Abandoned Edge of Avalon" by Eden Tyler. Fantasy.
• "The Amulet" by Alison Pensy.

@Smashwords:

• "Alter Egos" by Andrew Marx. Superhero.
• "The Seventh Sister (book 2 of the Parched)" by Z.L Arkadie. Paranormal Romance.

Serial Fiction
@Author's Site: "The Journals of Doctor Mormeck’s Avatar–Entry #9" by Jeff VanderMeer. SF.
@Strange Horizons: "The Rugged Track (part 2 of 2)" by Liz Argall.
@White Wolf: "Silent Knife (part 16)" by David Nurenberg. Horror.







@PodCastle: "The Duke of Vertumn’s Fingerling" by Elizabeth Carroll, read by Tina Connolly.

After I opened my eyes they dressed me in silk. A bone-white gown slipped over my head and I raised my arms for it like a child. With my hair undone, I must have looked like a bride. I was nothing of the kind.

@LibriVox: "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells, read by Mark Nelson.

"H.G. Wells’ classic science fiction-fantasy story, in which a scientist known only as “The Time Traveller” tells the tale of his journey to the year 802,701 A.D. and beyond, where he witnesses the end of human civilization as we know it, as well as the beginning of the end of the world. "

@Lightspeed: "Just Another Perfect Day" by John Varley, read by Stefan Rudnicki.

Free Fantasy, SF, and Horror

Some very good free fiction today (new, classic, and audio)










@Fantasy Magazine:"The Machine" by M. Rickert. Fantasy.

"Graveyards creak with too many bones, and the weight of headstones, and when the wind blows the air is dusty with the dead. Ah life, its hoary inevitability. What’s the point?"

Now Posted: Expanded Horizons #30 (July 2011). Speculative Fiction.
"The School" by Lavie Tidhar.

"There had been another boy at the school, called Ender, but he’d attacked and seriously hurt and in at least one case we knew of killed one of the other boys, and they finally had to put him down, though he kept protesting, the day they came for him, that it wasn’t his fault."

"A Handful of Earth" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

"He left, crates filled with earth, bound for England. Left us behind, promising to send for us. We believed him. But as the days went by, I realized he’d lied."

"Standing in Line at the End of the World: How One Man Became a God As Told to Isha Kiss" by Malon Edwards.

"For you, the Day of the Redeemer is a day to throw off the genteel and chaste Iaran shackles of society, let your hair down (or preen your crest feathers or touch-up your nacreous black lips), raise your petticoats and fulfill your every desire."

"The Representative" by T.N. Collie.

"Alex Haley, a man big on freedom and dignity, once said, “When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand.” Well, my hands were clenched when the woman’s business card appeared in one of them as I sat outside of Beanie’s Café sipping a zebra mocha."

@Week in Rewind: Free Kindle eBook: “Draugr” by Arthur Slade [via SF Signal]. Horror.

“Are you afraid of the dead?” her grandfather asked. Sarah Asmundson will discover the answer to that question. She is prepared for her grandfather’s scary stories, but is anything but prepared when events from the story about a draugr–a man who comes back from the dead–begin to happen around her.

Serial Fiction
@Author's Site. "The Journals of Doctor Mormeck (Mountain)–Entry #13" by Jeff VanderMeer. Science Fiction.

"It has been five days since my last confession, father, and I have sinned…Except I don’t believe in God or priests, despite the fact Marty does, and my “father” was my mother, too,"

@L5R: "Goddess (Part 1)" by Shawn Carman. Fantasy.

"The Hiruma scout carefully surveyed the land to the south and then crept back down the stone outcropping like the shadow of a cloud crossing a midday garden. He hurried back to the command group and bowed sharply. “There is movement again to the south, my lord Benjiro-sama,” he reported. “I believe the Destroyers definitely know that we are here, and are moving to separate any avenue of escape we might have.”"

Classic SF/Horror
@Gutenberg: A Book of Ghosts by S. Baring-Gould (1904). Horror. Ghost Stories.

"If He Went Out For a Walk They Trotted Forth With Him, Some Before, Some Following."

@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: Pharaoh's Broker by Ellsworth Douglass (1899). Science Fiction. Mars.

"I now understood the more composed behaviour of the women. They were accustomed to the idea of being taken in war, and never suffered slaughter or hardship thereby, but merely a change of masters. As they now left the Park they eyed me curiously, as if wondering from what sort of new master they had escaped. I imagined I could detect some signs of disappointment among them, at being cheated out of a trip to a new star or being dismissed from the service of a god. "

@Munseys and Project Gutenberg: "The Premiere" by Richard Sabia, from Amazing Science Fiction Stories September 1959. Science Fiction.

"The young actor was great.... They didn't realize just how great until the night of"

@Munseys and Project Gutenberg:"The Merchants of Venus" by A. H. Phelps, rom Galaxy Science Fiction March 1954.

"A pioneer movement is like a building—the foundation is never built for beauty!"

@Internet Archive: "The Black Brain" by Robert Bloch, from Fantastic Adventures (March 1943). [via Marooned - Science Fiction & Fantasy books on Mars]

"If this was the brain of a Martian millions of years, how could it be alive? How could it keep on growing?"

Reviewed Free SF
BestScienceFictionStories.com: "Cucumber Gravy" by Susan Palwick (2001). Science Fiction.

"I do not need the government crawling up my backside to regulate me, and I have a lot more customers this way, and I make a lot more money. Being legal would be nothing but a pain in the ass, even if I didn’t have to worry about keeping people from finding out about the space cucumbers."

BestScienceFictionStories.com: "Ej-Es" by Nancy Kress (2003). Science Fiction.

"You had to be a little insane to leave Earth for the Corps, knowing that when (if) you ever returned, all you had known would have been dust for centuries."

Escape Pod has posted it's 300th episode!! "We Go Back" by Tim Pratt, read by Mur Lafferty. Science Fiction.

"My best friend Jenny Kay climbed in through my window and nearly stepped on my head. If I’d been sleeping a foot closer to the wall, I would’ve gotten a face full of her boot, but instead I just snapped awake and said “What who what now?” and blinked a lot."

@Beam Me Up: "Greeters" by Zachery Cole. "What is it like to be a greeter for a big box department store now imagine you have been built expressly for that purpose – and all you want is a little time to figure out how the world works."and part 1 of "Paid" by Deanna knippling. "Boregard is both a multi-dimensional time traveler or a down and out gum-shoe. Neither and both are correct depending on what version of himself you ask….." Science Fiction.


@SFF audio: "The Stolen Bacillus" by H.G. Wells, read by Dawn Keenan.

"An anarchist, intent on wreaking ruin on a city, steals a phial from a bacteriologist."

@LibriVox: A new reading of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, read by Mark F. Smith. Science Fiction.

"Surely the Time Traveler threw great dinner parties! His guests were treated to a once-in-forever trial of a miniature time machine – an exquisite miniature that acted so flawlessly as to appear to be stage magic."

@LibriVox: A new reading of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, read by Caden Vaughn Clegg.

"Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion and recounts his story to Walton. Before beginning his story, Frankenstein warns Walton of the wretched effects of allowing ambition to push one to aim beyond what one is capable of achieving."

@LibriVox: Violet: A Fairy Story by Caroline Snowden Guild, many readers.

"A charming fairytale -- with realistic touches -- from the mid-19th Century."

Serial Audio
@Journey Into: "Cyberpunk (Part 1)" by D.K. Thompson, full cast. [Via David Barr Kirtley] Science Fiction.

"Log on or die. Test gamer Billy Gibson didn't realize his next job would change his life and family forever."

@Author's Site: "The Starter (Episode 22)" by Scott Sigler. Science Fiction.

"Quentin and the Krakens head to To to square off against Quentin's favorite team from his childhood. Quentin will lead his team against Frank Zimmer, the best QB in the league, and the hero of Quentin's youth. Will the Krakens prevail?"

@Triplanetary: The Adventures of Superman "The Radar Rocket (Parts 1-5)"

"Leapin' lizards! Jimmy Olsen is trapped in space aboard the radar rocket. Can even Superman save him?"

Fan Audio
@Misfits Audio: "GL-Man Without Fear: “History Lesson – Part 1”"

"Sodam Yat, holder of the mighty Ion powers, has questions for Guy and Kyle about Sinestro. In an attempt to find such answers the trio consults the great “Book of Oa”, which explains exactly how the most disciplined GL became their most feared foe!"

Tuesday Freebies Part One - Sci-Fi Comics

Some cool classic Sci-fi comics this morning. Illustration from "The Secret of the Hidden Planet!" below.











@The Fabulous Fifties: "The Secret of the Hidden Planet!" Sci-Fi. In with other Gene Colon stories (mostly war).


@Grantbridge Street: "Kingdom on an Island of the Apes" B&W. Sci-Fi. [PG comic - R rated site]








@Diversions of the Groovy Kind: "Arena" Sci-Fi. Based on Fredric Brown story.





@Atomic Kommie Comics: Two versions of "Invasion" Sci-Fi. Interesting to see how pre-code comics stories were edited for post-code standards.





@Atomic Kommie Comics: Ken Brady in "Boy Who Wasn't There" and "Pirates of the Airwaves" Sci-Fi.





@Secret Sanctum of Captain Video: Beneath the Planet of the Apes the conclusion. Sci-Fi.






@Digital Comics Museum: Unusual Tales #12 (1958). Weird Tales. Free membership required.