In The Garden Of Iden, Kage Baker's fantastic novel about time-traveling cyborgs who work for the 24th century Company, is available as a free download. Five-year-old Mendoza is about to be tortured to death as a Jew in the Spanish Inquisition, when she's rescued by the Company and turned into a time-traveling operative — but her first assignment is to the 16th century, uncomfortably close to her own time. It's available in PDF, HTML, or Mobi formats. Meanwhile, the new New Yorker has George Saunders' bizarre pitch for a version of Heroes where people only think they have superpowers. (Although I didn't like the ending.) And the pilot for J.J. Abrams' Fringe is available for viewing on Surf The Channel, and shows no signs of being taken down. [Beam Me Up and New Yorker and Surf The Channel ]

Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.