Monday, June 10, 2013

Give Me Free Fiction or Give Me Death

The free fiction keeps on coming and will hopefully continue for many years.  There are many good ones today, so I'll stop boring you here and let you get to them.




[Art from Crime City Central, linked in Other Genres]






Fiction
• At Author's Site: "Solo For Concert Grand" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Science Fiction.
      "Emily Trencheon lives life as a prodigy—and a successful experiment. She provides a shining example for the Academy of Universal Languages to continue its program with the Miaslan. But she alone knows the truth. And she fears her final act of communication—a piano composition meant to be played in total darkness—will be forever lost in the shadows of misinterpretation."

• At Cast of Wonders: "Mr. Scampers’ War" by J. S. Bell. YA.
     "An explosion of leaves, a swirl of dust and the fierce jungle cat leaps from the verdant forest and is on the gazelle in one bound. Claws rend and jaws clamp shut. The gazelle dies with a bleat of terror."

• At HiLobrow: "Theodore Savage - part 14" by Cicely Hamilton.
     "When war breaks out in Europe — war which aims successfully to displace entire populations — British civilization collapses utterly and overnight. The ironically named Theodore Savage, an educated and dissatisfied idler, must learn to survive by his wits in the new England, where 20th-century science, technology, and culture are regarded with superstitious awe and terror."

• At L5R: "Scenes from the Empire" by Robert Denton & Seth Mason. Fantasy.
     "Suzume Tatsu stretched his back as he surveyed his meager crop. In four consecutive years, he’d had no luck with this new soil, which too-often alternated between parched and dry or flooded and swollen."

• At Strange Horizons: "Collateral Memory" by Sabrina Vourvoulias.
     "Friends or not, there is one guiding rule in the game: it's got to be genuine. Like life. Real. Anything else would be a cheat. And despite all of our other differences, no one in the shed is that. Except me."

• At The WiFiles: "Sixty-Five Going on Zero" by Tara Campbell. Speculative Fiction.
       "Harry St. Clair was through with life. Well, clinically that may not have been true, but that was how he felt. He felt especially lousy on this particular day, and he wasn’t even completely awake yet. Eyes closed, he lay in bed and contemplated his first day of retirement."

Flash Fiction
Audio Fiction
• At Author's Site: "The MVP Episode #35" by Scott Sigler. Science Fiction. Football.
      "Quentin faces his biggest challenge yet, and must draw from his inner warrior to show unparalleled toughness. Becca "The Wrecka" Montagne steps in for late-game heroics, while the will of Yhitzak Goldman's is put to the test."

• At Beam Me Up: "Episode  # 369" Science Fiction.
      "A World’s New Destiny" by Kallamis and "No Great Magic - ch7" by Fritz Leiber.

• At Cast of Wonders: "Mr. Scampers’ War" by J. S. Bell. YA.
     Described Above.

• At The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 07 - The Land That Time Forgot" Adventure
     "Our hero and the crew of the U-33 are leaning about their new land, Caspak.  A secure palisaded camp has been built.  Hunting expeditions bring home meat and knowledge to the camp – and now, oil has been discovered nearby."

• At LibriVox: "Lord Tony's Wife" by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. Adventure.
      "Another adventure of the Scarlet pimpernel! As the title suggests, it follows the story of Lord Tony and his wife, Yvonne. It is full of suspense adventure and romance. Lord Tony and Yvonne elope after some disturbing happenings including an angry mob and an assault on Yvonne by her own father."

• At SFFaudio: "The Pit And The Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe.
     "I WAS sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears."

• At Strange Horizons: "Collateral Memory" by Sabrina Vourvoulias.
     Described Above

Other Genres

2 comments:

David Scholes said...

Hi Dave
My "Essential Reading in Science Fiction" - collection of short stories will be free again on Amazon from 12.01am 13 June (US Pacific Time):
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1449581889

Dave Tackett said...

Thanks for the notice!