I'm Pickin' Up Good Free Fiction. It's Giving Me Excitations

Yeah! There's quite a bit of really outstanding free fantasy and science fiction this morning. Be certain not to miss any of the greatness.And mystery fans will want to check out the "other genres" for a couple of good ones. [Art from "Ragged Claws" by Lisa Tuttle in fiction and audio fiction.]






Fiction
• At The Colored Lens: "Another Life" by Michael Siciliano. Science Fiction, Slipstream
     "I stood on a hill, overlooking a city. A giant mushroom cloud dominated my field of view. White hot at the base. Yellow as it extended up. Red as it billowed outward. Dark gray at the rounded top. Each color shot through with streaks of black. It was beautiful and horrific at the same time. Larger than I could have imagined."

• At Drabblecast: "Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain" by Cat Rambo. Science Fiction Romance.
      "Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had shaped her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five distributed by the Bureau: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural."

• At HiLobrow: "Herland -  part 10" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Science Fiction. 1915. 
      "When I asked her about it, she tried at first to tell me, and then, seeing me flounder, asked for more information about ours. She soon found that we had many, that they varied widely, but had some points in common. A clear methodical luminous mind had my Ellador, not only reasonable, but swiftly perceptive."

• At Lightspeed: "Ragged Claws" by Lisa Tuttle. Science Fiction
      "Last night, after a short struggle, I went out. It’s like that most evenings, the slow, silent battle between my desire to stay in, with my thoughts and dreams and memories, and the need to go where other people gathered. Much as I preferred my own company, no one, these days, was paying me to keep it. I lived as frugally as I could on what I’d saved, but the price of electricity had soared recently, and I was in the red again. If I went out, there was at least the chance of making money."

• At Lightspeed: "Bellweather" by Marc Laidlaw. Fantasy.
      "They had struggled for days through a wasteland of broken rock, high in the mountains, on their way through a pass that maps had indicated would take them to a country of promise. The first of the rocks were chipped and quarried, and showed signs of having been worked by artisans as much as by nature. But after a time, the unfashioned stone gave way to broken figures. The general impression was that a nation of statues, its entire populace, had been carried to the heavens and then dropped, so that all were shattered. Fractured heads and torsos, truncated limbs, toes and fingers of every size, from gnomic to gigantic, lay strewn from peak to peak, as if spread across the high mountain valleys by glacial action."

• At Strange Horizions: "ARIECC 1.0" by Lillian Wheeler. Science Fiction.

     "You are speaking to the Automated Road Information and Emergency Contact Computer, version one point zero. How may I help you?"

• At Weird Fiction Review: "The Divinity Student" by Michael Cisco. Part Two and Part Three.
      "Pausing in mid-stride, two black dogs stare at the Divinity Student as he emerges from the office. Recoiling, he claps his hands and steps backwards into the threshold; they scrabble headlong down the stairs with clicking feet — a bad omen. With a rustle of papers, he recollects himself and follows them down slowly."

Flash Fiction

• At Classics On-the-Go: "The Hungry Wolf" Audio. Children's Fantasy.
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Tunnel Vision" by Zach Shephard. Science Fiction. 
• At Quantum Muse: "Lights Out" by Gabriel E Zentner.
• At Strange Horizons: "When Ever Young" by Mukete Samuel Oreh. Poem.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Ringminer’s Daughter" by Duncan Shields. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Drabblecast: "Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain" by Cat Rambo. Science Fiction Romance.
      "Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had shaped her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five distributed by the Bureau: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural." and drabble "The Octopus Train" by Jason Jones.

• At Lightspeed: "Ragged Claws" by Lisa Tuttle. Science Fiction, read by Alex Hyde-White.
      "Last night, after a short struggle, I went out. It’s like that most evenings, the slow, silent battle between my desire to stay in, with my thoughts and dreams and memories, and the need to go where other people gathered. Much as I preferred my own company, no one, these days, was paying me to keep it. I lived as frugally as I could on what I’d saved, but the price of electricity had soared recently, and I was in the red again. If I went out, there was at least the chance of making money."

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "The Invader" by Alfred Coppel, read by Julie Hoverson.
     "Invading Earth was going to be a cinch, the Triomed scout decided. But to make certain he must study its inhabitants—as one of them!" from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1953. Text here.

• At Protecting Project Pulp: "Letter from the Stars" by A. E. van Vogt, read by Josh Roseman. Science Fiction.
     "It was just a peaceful correspondence between two lonely shut-in strangers — but the destiny of the universe was to depend on the answers" first published in Out of This World Adventures, July 1950.

• At Strange Horizions: "ARIECC 1.0" by Lillian Wheeler, read by Anaea Lay. Science Fiction.

     "You are speaking to the Automated Road Information and Emergency Contact Computer, version one point zero. How may I help you?"

Other Genres

• Audio at Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine: "Ghost Negligence" by John Shepphird, read by John Cramer.
• Fiction at Author's Site: "What People Leave Behind Written" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Mystery.
• Fiction at At Baen: "Sweothi City" by Larry Correia. Military adventure.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Tomorrow I Will Skydive" by Stephen V. Ramey.

Part Two

A ton of great freebies for part two of today's links. More later if possible. (Photo for Selected Shorts in audio fiction below)










Fiction
• At AE: "First Date" by David Tallerman. Science Fiction.
     "How many nights has Johnny walked by the House of Mirrors? How many times has he glanced at its drab plastic facade and wondered? He was never scared to come, but they take the rules seriously in the House, it’s all legit, and if your biomet says you’re under twenty-one they won’t so much as look at you. So Johnny waited — not with patience, but with determination stubborn as faith. And now it’s time. Tonight he can do more than look."

• At Author's Site: "Craters" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Science Fiction.
     "What they don’t tell you when you sign up is that the work takes a certain amount of trust. The driver, head covered by a half-assed turban, smiles a little too much, and when he yes-ma’ams you and no ma’ams you, you can be lulled into thinking he actually works for you."

• At The Colored Lens: "Blessings by the Shade" by S. L. Nickerson. Alternative History. Mythic Fantasy.
     "They still tell stories about the day I was born, of how a lilac comet streaked across the stars and the volcano ceased spitting fires to the heavens. They call it omens but I call it a conspiracy of convenience. This is what made me High Priestess, because I am blessed."

• At Cosmos: "Angels Call in Strange Disguise" by Christopher K. Miller.
     "The clown’s presence means that you are, in all probability, going to die tonight. There’s not much your sailfone hasn’t told you. They don’t send these clowns to just anyone."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Tying of Tongues" by Kristi DeMeester. 
     "When the hooded woman came to our village, her bloodied skirts trailing behind her, the old mothers whispered behind chapped hands, and the animals found their holes and hid."

• At L5R: "The Sparrow’s Fate - Part 1" by Robert Denton. Fantasy.
     "When Moshi Rukia awoke on the third and final day of her visit to the Suzume Hills, she looked out her window to find the valley covered in a thick layer of snow. She knew winter came quickly in the valley, she just didn’t know it would be this quickly."

• At Lightspeed: "The Sense of the Circle" by Angélica Gorodischer. Science Fiction.
      "Have you seen those houses on Oroño Boulevard, especially the ones that face east, those dry, cold, serious, heavy houses, with grilles but without gardens, maybe at the most a tile patio paved like the sidewalk? In one of those houses lives Ciro Vázquez Leiva, Cirito."

• At Lightspeed: "The Dream Detective" by Lisa Tuttle. Fantasy.
      "In the beginning, I was not attracted to her at all. Quite the opposite. I don’t know if it was intentional on her part, and honestly, I’m not the sort of dick who always judges women on how hot they are, but if there’s any situation in which a person’s attractiveness matters, I think everybody would agree it’s a blind date."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "The Love of Beauty" by K.J. Bishop.
     "Near the middle of the night, Seaming dithered in front of the brick arch – formerly a minor gate in the old city wall and now a decoration in a lane. If there existed a main entrance to the Ravels, it was that arch. It stood only half a furlong from the glitz of Cake Street, but the short distance marked a change of register from the demimonde to the underworld proper."

• At The WiFiles: "God’s Great Acrimony" by D. C. Golightly. Speculative Fiction.
     "I will always savor the taste of blood. Even though I starve myself of its nourishment for strictly selfish reasons I can’t help but crave the bitter embrace of its crimson flavor."

Flash Fiction

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Skipping Stones" by Devin Miller.
• At Every Day Fiction: "A Day Before All of Those Nights" by Sarah Crysl Akhtar. Fantasy. 
• At Quantum Muse: "The Collider" by Harris Tobias.
• At Strange Horizons: "Origin" by Heather Sommer. Speculative Poem. Audio.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Extremophile" by Aaron Koelker. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The End of the Extinction" by Isla Kay. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Ascensual" by Daniel Martin Fairbairn. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Author's Site: "The MVP Episode #24" by Scott Sigler. Science Fiction. Football.
   No description.

• At Beam Me Up: "Part 4 of Know How Can Do" by Michael Blumlein.
    "Of course we'll wait. How silly of me to think otherwise. Science begins wit h observation, and Sheila Downey is a scientist. We'll watch and wait together, al l three of us, the woman who made me what I am, the worm that isn't there, and me."

• At Clarkesworld: "86, 87, 88, 89" by Genevieve Valentine.
    "You are part of a vital effort to recover evidence of terrorist activity preceding the Raids, and on a larger scale, to preserve the heritage of a historic neighborhood of New York City."

• At Cthulhu: "House on the Borderland, parts 20 and 21" by William Hope Hodgson.  Horror.
     No description

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 08 - The Beasts of Tarzan" Adventure.
     "Tarzan has fallen into Rokoff’s trap. Pursuing the Russian, Tarzan has left his comrades behind to forge ahead. He comes to a tribe of cannibals who report that Rokoff is a day ahead of them"

• At LibriVox: "Jewels of Gwahlur" by Robert E. Howard. Fantasy.
     "Conan The Barbarian is after fabulous treasure in this exciting story. But he finds himself in more difficulties than he had counted on. Crafty and powerful human opponents seek to skin him alive, bestial mutations seek to rip his arms off, denizens of the deep want to devour him whole and scantily clad dusky beauties try to waylay him at every step."

• At Lightspeed: "The Sense of the Circle" by Angélica Gorodischer. Science Fiction.
     Described Above.

• At Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: "Lost Waters" by Kreg Steppe.
     "Daniel Pleasant, agent of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, is assigned to the United States of America to track down some missing items from the Archives. Pleasant is partnered up with a clankerton from the Office of the Supernatural and Metaphysical (O.S.M.) Elijah Paxton, and together the two set off to track the missing Archive items, their power rumoured to be able to bend time and space itself."

• At Protecting Project Pulp: "Adventure’s Heart" by Albert Dorrington. Adventure.
      "A curiously carved throne of sandalwood stood at the far end of the chamber, its highly polished sides glinting with innumerable pearls inset. Above the throne gleamed a naked skull." - First published in Top-Notch, May 1, 1922.

• At Slected Shorts: "Expect the Unexpected"
     "Guest host Neil Gaiman presents tales with surprises. Jane Yolen’s “The Babysitter” is a contemporary Gothic with a twist; James Thurber’s classic “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” introduces a milquetoast with attitude; Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” anticipated our media driven lives; and Thurber’s “The Wood Duck” seems to have nine lives."

• At Toasted Cake: "Don't Look Down" by Anatoly Belilovsky.
     "A whistling in my ears: wind. It's called wind. I'm flying, flying in the wind, under the blue that's called the sky, toward the brown that's called the ground. I feel it push my hands, my legs, my face. I feel a weight against my back."


Other Genres

• Audio at The Way of the Buffalo: "The Chase" by Ken Liu. Surreal. Flash.
• Audio at Crime City Central: "Oedipus Shrugged" by Copper Smith.
• Audio at Every Day Fiction: "Twist Twist Shake" by E.M.Pearson. Suspense. Flash.
• Fiction at The New Yorker: "The Judge’s Will" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Love Is All Around" by Raine.

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.”