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If you need some free, online fiction to distract you on your lunch break, look no farther than Daniel "How to Stop a Robot Uprising" Wilson's first work of science fiction, a short story called "The Nostalgist." More »
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Baen's Free Library gives you scads of lunchtime reading with their collection of free novels online. But sometimes the cheesetastic 1980s covers and titles are the best part. More »
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You can read the short story that's sparking a new debate about the future of African science fiction for free online. "Poison" by Henrietta Rose-Innes won the 2008 Caine Prize for African writing. It's a harrowing story of a woman fleeing a disaster in Cape Town, pursued by the threat of destructive chemical rain, and the Guardian has posted the whole thing on its site. More »
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The latest issue of IEEE Spectrum, a journal for speculative engineering geeks, is devoted to "the singularity," that moment when our society changes so dramatically that it becomes incomprehensible to people who lived in the past. The issue is packed with free online essays by singularity thinkers like science fiction author Vernor "Rainbows End" Vinge, Rodney Brooks of MIT's AI Lab, and Ray "Singularity is Near" Kurzweil. The whole issue is well worth a serious read. But my favorite part by far is an essay by Vinge, an SF author and computer scientist whose singularity scenarios in his novels are both compelling and realistic. He breaks down singularity scenarios into the five most-likely possibilities, any of which he thinks could happen by 2030. More »
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The latest issue of Gavin Grant and Kelly Link's zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet is available now, and it's full of mystifying and bizarre tales that remind me of Link's own unsettling fiction. Maureen McHugh has a weird story about flying mutants who feel a compulsion to go to France, and infect others with the same urge. Carol Emshwiller has a snarky tale about students who hate their writing instructor, which perfectly complements Caleb Wilson's story of weird artists whose paths intersect with a Depression-era mad detective. I love Eileen Gunn's poem where Alice from The Honeymooners builds her own moon-rocket to get away from Ralph. And (shameless self-promotion here) I also have a more-freaky-than-usual story in this issue. You can get the issue as an e-book for a slight discount on the cover price. [Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet at E-Reader] More »
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If you have ever semi-guiltily read Laurel Hamilton's trashy elf sex novels, or managed the feat of reading John Norman's Gor books while simultaneously rolling your eyes, then today's lunchtime reading, "Under the Moons of Riadorf," will be the perfect diversion for you. Writing under the pen names Claire Rasmussen and Belle Heartley, the authors have created a loving parody of space opera romance about a firey princess who is plotting to overthrow the interstellar regime of the (hot) man she's forced to marry (and have a LOT of sex with). And the writing is hilarious — one of the authors, under her real name, just got a giant book deal with Little, Brown to write a YA novel. Check out some of the first chapter below. More »
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A couple of Scottish boys find an actual crashed alien spaceship — and they assume that science fiction is a totally accurate guide to extraterrestrial encounters. That's just the set-up in Alan Campbell's hilarious and sick story "The Gadgey," which went up last week at venerable science fiction webzine Strange Horizons. Campbell's story gets more and more demented as it goes along — and the part where the boys and their friend get the alien stoned isn't even the weirdest bit. There are so many more reasons why "The Gadgey" is our recommended lunchtime reading for today. More »
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The coolest near-future story I've read recently is now available online, as a free download. Maureen McHugh's story "Interview: On Any Given Day" wraps genetic engineering and future youth subcultures into a story that's alternately funny and super-disturbing. The story's faux-interview format and weird little hyperlinks add to the feeling that you're consuming a piece of medium-high culture from a future world where genetic tampering has led to some horrendous side effects, including a new sexually transmitted disease. Spoilers ahead. More »
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Gwyneth Jones, author of the fantasty-scifi-pop-music Bold As Love series, has put some of her short fiction online for free recently — plus some great essays, including the thought-provoking "Aliens In The Fourth Dimension." But my favorite story she's put online is the weird, gritty and unpredictable "Fulcrum," which is sort of a cyberpunk noir cowboy occult adventure story. It's the perfect thing to read right about now, to give you a jolt of insanity to help you get through the rest of your day. More »
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If Philip K. Dick's "Axis won the war" novel Man in the High Castle made you squirm, then the 1980s novels about Lord Horror and his Nazi England will make your brain explode. The Lord Horror novels — Lord Horror, followed by Motherfuckers: The Auschwitz of Oz — are vicious, psychedelic satire about a Nazi DJ (Lord Horror) in England after Germany wins World War II. Written by underground publishers David Britton and Michael Butterworth, owners of the notorious Savoy Books, the first novel was declared obscene in court and got Britton sent to jail for four months. Now, cult author and critic Keith Seward (who wrote Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish under the name Supervert) has helped revive the long-suppressed scifi classics in a collection called Horror Panegyric. It brings together Seward's essay about the Lord Horror books with excerpts from the novels. And you can read it online for free. More »
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The latest issue of Helix Speculative Fiction just went online, and it includes a few great science fiction stories, including the alternate-universe romance "The Einstein-Rosen Hunter-Gatherer Society" by George S. Walker. But probably the best piece this time around is Clifford W. Dunbar's "Holiday In Hot Zone 16," a brutal satire that targets our easy-chair consumption of horrors around the globe. Click through for details, and then head over to Helix to check it out. More »
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In a war-ravaged future where most urban areas are riddled with mines, a de-miner's only friends are New York street kids and his bomb dog Uxo (short for unexploded ordnance). In the short story "Uxo, Bomb Dog," available from excellent scifi blog Futurismic, author Eliot Fintushel creates a wry, sad portrait of a man who has devoted his lonely life to de-mining open spaces so people can walk freely in parks again. Eventually, the government sends him a human partner and the two of them turn their de-mining into a kind of strange comedy act, attracting locals to watch them de-mine fields while dispensing Smokey the Bear-style wisdom about how to avoid getting your face blown off while walking across Central Park ("Use your pate! Circumnavigate!") Yes, it's today's lunchtime reading. More »
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