Monday, August 18, 2014

Morning Free Fiction

Catch up post. Too many for pictures.











Fiction
• At Baen: "An Imperium Pursuit" by Jody Lynn Nye. Science Fiction.
"My friends and relatives arrayed themselves in three flanks behind me, one each to right, left and above me. The twenty of us swooped straight down a hundred stories toward the busy cityscape of Nikplig. I narrowly missed colliding with a goods vehicle about to dock on a platform a kilometer or so above the ground. With the expert skill at piloting and hair-trigger reflexes that I am too modest to admit I possess, I pulled aside just in time."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "The Story Will Win a Hugo" by James Van Pelt. Science Fiction.
"An astrophysicist does science. A writer writes. If she wants to watch me hunched over a computer for hours at a time in literature's name, who am I to deny her?"

• At Lightspeed: "Morning Child" by Gardner Dozois. Science Fiction:
"The old house had been hit by something sometime during the war and mashed nearly flat. The front was caved in as though crushed by a giant fist: wood pulped and splintered, beams protruding at odd angles like broken fingers, the second floor collapsed onto the remnants of the first. The rubble of a chimney covered everything with a red mortar blanket."

• At Lightspeed: "The Djinn Who Sought To Kill The Sun" by Tahmeed Shafiq. Fantasy.
"They travelled all day, and at night came to rest by one of the large rocks that jut from the desert. The last caveat to voyagers before the plains of windswept sand. Here is what the boy heard: 'Long ago, almost fifty years by official counting, there was a boy named Alladin.'" Text and Audio.

• At Mad Scientist Journal:  "The Eversible Antarctic Sky – Part One" by James Hanson. Science Fiction.
"The purpose of our expedition as stated in our charter is twofold: to determine the ultimate fate of Baxendell’s expedition of 1869, and to recover as much of their personal effects and scientific equipment as possible, with special emphasis on Oxford’s astrographic lens and the Royal Society’s Synthetical Engine No. 2. Truthfully I have another, personal purpose in this endeavour, which is to vindicate Sir Arthur Baxendell, who has always garnered my deepest admiration, both in his capacity as a physicist and, despite my habitual distaste for the profession, as a mathematician."

• At Nightmare Magazine: "The Kiss" by Tia V. Travis. Horror.
"The angel’s heart was torn from its chest. The stained-glass box that once held it was smashed; ruby tears scattered around the fountain. The ruins of the valentine lay amidst splinters of red glass and oak leaves mottled with rot"

• At Project Gutenberg: "A Voyage to the Moon" by Cyrano de Bergerac. Science Fiction. 1657.
""You see one," answered I, "stunned with so many Wonders that I know not what to admire most; for coming from a World, which without doubt you take for a Moon here, I thought I had arrived in another, which our Worldlings call a Moon also; and behold I am in Paradice at the Feet of a God, who will not be Adored." "Except the quality of a God," replied he, "whose Creature I only am, the rest you say is true: This Land is the Moon, which you see from your Globe"

• At Strange Horizons: "The Air We Breathe Is Stormy, Stormy" by Rich Larson. Speculative Fiction.
"In Baltic waters, gnashed by dark waves, there stood an old oil platform on rusted legs. It was populated as rigs always are, by coarse men young and strong whose faces soon overgrew with bristle and bloat. Cedric was one of these." Text and Audio.

• At Tor.com: "Sleeper" by Jo Walton. Science Fiction.
"None of those facts are unproblematic. It wasn’t exactly a newspaper, nor was the process by which he received the information really reading. The question of his consciousness is a matter of controversy, and the process by which he regained it certainly illegal."

• At Tor.com: "La Signora" by Bruce McAllister. Dark Fantasy.
"a dark fantasy about a teenage American living in an ancient Italian fishing village with his parents. He’s invited by his friends to go night-fishing on one special night, and although he knows his parents would disapprove, he goes anyway."

Flash Fiction
• At Beware the Hairy Mango: "Ivory Man" by Matthew Sanborn Smith.
• At The Colored Lens: "Magic Hands" by Iulian Ionescu. Fantasy.
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Switch" by Jonathan L. Miller. Science Fiction.
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Sugar and Spice" by Melissa Mead. Fantasy.
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Do Not Count the Withered Ones" by Caroline M. Yoachim. Magic Realism.
• At Daily Science Fiction: "Cover Letter" by Dani Atkinson. Fantasy.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Trial by Comedy" by Lance J. Mushung. Science Fiction.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Talking Animals" by Spencer German Ellsworth. Science Fiction.
• At Every Day Fiction: "Pastorale No. 3: The Longboat Burial" by Gerald Warfield. Fantasy.
• At Farther Stars Than These: "The Facility" by David K Scholes. Science Fiction.
• At Nature: "The Death of Immortality" by Kyle L. Wilson & Andrew B. Barbour. Science Fiction.
• At Quantum Muse: "Cheap Wine" by Harris Tobias
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Tandem Passenger" by Peter R Jennings. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Prime Numbers" by Elijah Goering. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Mind’s Lie" by Amber K Bryant. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "The Last Witness of Memories" by Elisa Nuckle. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Hate the Player" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "I Would Know" by RM Dooley.
• At Toasted Cake: "Blood Willows" by Caroline M. Yoachim. Audio,
• At Yesteryear Fiction: "Swanson Piper" by Paul Tristram. Fantasy.

Audio Fiction
• At Drabblecast: "The Colour Out of Space" by  H.P. Lovecraft. Horror.
"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs." Audio and Text.

• At Escape Pod: "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love" by Rachel Swirsky, read by Christina Lebonville. Science Fiction.
"If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you would be a T-Rex. You’d be a small one, only five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you. You’d be fragile-boned and you’d walk with as delicate and polite a gait as you could manage on massive talons. Your eyes would gaze gently from beneath your bony brow-ridge."

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tarzan the Untamed chapters 22 and 23. Adventure.
"We last saw Bertha Kircher as she was being brought to the maniac King – only to be grabbed and stolen away by Metak, the crazed son of the king. Carrying the girl, Metak flees through the palace until he comes to the apparent end of his flight – in front of a large and deep pool of water blocking his way."

• At PodCastle: "Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy" by by Saladin Ahmed, read by Steve Anderson. Fantasy.
"We were sipping tea in a room with green carpets, and I was laughing at a jest that…that someone was making. Who? The face, the voice, the name have been stolen from me. All I know is that my brothers and I suddenly found ourselves in this twisted place, each aware of the others’ fates, but unable to find one another. Unable to find any escape."

• At Pseudopod: "The Wriggling Death" by Harold Gross, read by Veronica Giguere. Horror.
"After finding the dell, we walked homeward in a more subdued fashion. After only a few steps, the contemplative silence was broken by the rustling of leaves behind us. We stopped in our tracks. We’d outrun Deaths all our lives and, in high Season, had even gone off into the desert to protect ourselves. More than enough females were willing to accept them into themselves and breed for as long as their accelerated aging would allow. There were always those that wanted to bear young. But that wasn’t Chalen or myself, thank you. We had our voices and our music and our fans. That was enough."

• At Radio Drama Revival: "Land of Enchantment 2 of 4"
"Mojo takes a job playing piano at the Armadillo Bistro and Cabaret in Coyote, New Mexico, where he’s drawn into an adventure with a cast of wild west characters, including a 100 year old curandera (medicine woman), and an Apache spirit guide who is one helluva prankster."

• At SFFaudio: "Dracula’s Guest" by Bram Stoker, read by Robert White. Horror.
When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbruck (the maitre d'hotel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down bareheaded to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door, "Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late." Here he smiled and added,"for you know what night it is."  

• At StarShipSofa: "Feral Moon” by Alex Jablokov, read by Jonathan Danz. Science Fiction.
"The corpses fell from the interior of the moon like drops of water from an icicle. The body repatriation team that hung in the open space just outside the blast crater maneuvered back and forth and caught them in a grid of storage modules, one by one. Behind them, the stars moved slowly past.

• At Tales to Terrify: "Case of the Tibetan Rug" by William Meikle. Horror.
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Other
• At Classic Tales Podcast: "The Wire Jacket - a Fu-Manchu Adventure" by Sax Rohmer, read by BJ Harrison.
• At Crime City Central: "Hard Rock" by Gerard Brennan, narrator Kenny Park.
At Protecting Project Pulp: “The Coin of Dionysius” by Ernest Bramah, read by Jay Langejans. Noir.
• At The Western Online: "Enjoy the Honey" by John Laneri. Western

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