Sometimes you might find yourself sitting at a computer, wanting to read something. But you don't want something long. You're thinking, what about a short story, and possibly something in the fantasy or sci-fi realms? You're in luck! Here are four collections, for your reading pleasure:
Apex Magazine short fiction |
Baen Ebooks Free Library, which includes some short story collections |
Eclipse Online, from Nightshade Books |
Strange Horizons fiction archive, including podcasts of many stories. If this is overwhelming,
io9 has a pick of 5 short stories from January, with synopses. [Previously:
Plane of the Ecliptic, on the Eclipse series |
This isn't your grandfather's science fiction, where "Exhalation" is from the Eclipse series]
posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 5, 2013 -
15 comments
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, went on sale 75 years ago today. The first printing, by Allen & Unwin, was for 1,500 copies (which now fetch a
premium at auction); the first reviewer, the son of the publisher,
was paid a shilling. Through a contorted publishing history, exact or even approximate sales figures are unknown; "over a hundred million"
is often quoted.
[more inside]
posted by Wordshore
on Sep 21, 2012 -
108 comments
What I wrote was unquestionably fiction — was fantasy. Among Others has magic and fairies. But I was writing fantasy about a science fiction reader who had a lot of the same things happen to her that happened to me. It’s set at the end of 1979 and the beginning of 1980, and it’s about a fifteen year old just when I was fifteen, and from a family like mine and in the time and place and context where I was. I was using a lot of my own experience and memories. But this is Mori, not me, and she lives in a world where magic is real. Jo Walton, who as editor for tor.com
revisisted the Hugos 1953-2000, now has one of her own, taking home
the 2012 Best Novel Award for
Among Others. Other winners include
Kij Johnson for her Novella
The Man who Bridged the Mist (excerpt) and io9 regular
Charlie Jane Anders for her novellete
Six Months, Three Days. The Best Graphic Story award went to the webcomic
Digger by
Ursula Vernon. E Lily Yu took home the Bets New Writer award (technically not a Hugo) and was also nominated for her short story
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees. A couple of TV shows you have heard of also got awards. Links to many of the nominated stories
here.
posted by Artw
on Sep 3, 2012 -
51 comments
Each morning at 9am for the next two weeks, (Mefi's Own) scifi and fantasy author
John Scalzi will be chatting with musician
Jonathan Coulton about one of his science fiction songs -- a different song each morning, -- in a daily podcast over at Tor.com called
Journey to Planet JoCo. Series
index. On May 29th, they'll be premiering a brand new, previously unheard Coulton song.
posted by zarq
on May 17, 2012 -
3 comments
Cult books come and cult books go - that's part of what it means to be a cult book. A few keep reappearing, however. They get discovered over and over by successive waves of admirers. After the third or fourth reappearance, the suspicion begins to arise that this isn't a cult book, after all. It's a masterpiece with problems. Islandia is such a book. - Noel Perrin,
"The Best of All Imaginary Islands" [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Jul 18, 2011 -
15 comments
... history is written by the winners. That's the philosophy behind "The Last Ringbearer," a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring... and told from the point of view of the losers. ... In Yeskov's retelling, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science "destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men!"
posted by Joe Beese
on Feb 15, 2011 -
90 comments
Ted Chiang is perhaps the finest author in contemporary science fiction -- and the most rarefied.
A technical writer by trade and a graduate of the distinguished
Clarion Writers Workshop, Chiang has published only twelve short stories in the last twenty years, one dozen masterpieces of the genre whose insightful, precise, often poetic language confronts fundamental ideas -- intelligence, consciousness, the nature of God -- and thrusts them into a dazzling new light.
Click inside for a complete listing of Chiang's work, with links to online reprints or audio recordings where available, as well as a collection of one-on-one interviews, links to his nonfiction essays, and a few other related sites and articles.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 27, 2010 -
116 comments
OMNI was launched (PDF) by Kathy Keeton, long-time companion and later wife of Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, who described the magazine in its first issue as "an original if not controversial mixture of science fact, fiction, fantasy and the paranormal". [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on Oct 20, 2010 -
64 comments
Are you an aspiring writer of genre fiction? Would you like to workshop your stuff before submitting it to magazines and publishers, but you don't happen to have a group of local friends that you can workshop with?
Critters.org is an online, highly automated fiction workshop. You submit your manuscript, it waits in a queue until its time comes up, and then it gets sent out to all the active subscribers, some of whom will hopefully send you some helpful feedback! Make sure to critique at least one story every week, though, or you lose your privileges to post your own stories to the queue.
[more inside]
posted by kavasa
on Aug 1, 2010 -
19 comments
Although it's commonplace nowadays to assume that J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was the primary source of inspiration for Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax when they created the world's first tabletop roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons, a careful examination of the game suggests otherwise... James Maliszewski on
The Books That Founded D&D. Some
disagreement.
posted by Artw
on Nov 24, 2009 -
109 comments
Like
others before him
Benjamin Rosenbaum is making his debut short story collection,
The Ant King And Other Stories, available from his publishers,
Small Beer, as a
free download. More than this though, he is holding a
competition to find the best derivative work inspired by it. These include "translations, plays, movies, radio plays, audiobooks, flashmob happenings, horticultural installations, visual artworks, slash fanfic epics, robot operas, sequels, webcomics, ASCII art, text adventure games, roleplaying campaigns, knitting projects, handmade shoes, or anything else you feel like."
[more inside]
posted by ninebelow
on Sep 19, 2008 -
19 comments
Free Speculative Fiction Online is a database of free science fiction and fantasy stories online by published authors (no fan-fiction or stories by unpublished writers). Among the authors that FSFO links to are
Paul Di Filippo (14 stories),
James Tiptree, Jr. (4 stories),
Connie Willis (3 stories),
Eleanor Arnason (3 stories),
Bruce Sterling (5 stories),
Robert Heinlein (7 stories),
Ursula K. LeGuin (3 stories),
Jonathan Lethem (5 stories),
Michael Moorcock (6 stories),
Chine Miéville (2 stories),
Samuel R. Delany (3 stories),
Robert Sheckley (8 stories), MeFite
Charles Stross (33 stories) and hundreds of other authors. If you don't know where to start, there's a list of
recommended stories.
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 5, 2008 -
34 comments
Imagine a world without lightsabers—where, instead, every big Star Wars finale consists of a 10-minute slap fight. Thank the maker we’ll never have to witness such a spectacle, because magical and impossibly high-tech weapons are staples of nearly all of our favorite entertainments! ToyFare Magazine presents
the 50 Greatest Fictional Weapons of All Time.
posted by cmgonzalez
on Nov 21, 2007 -
59 comments
"I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world." Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart won the World Fantasy Award in 1985. Set in a China that never was, it tells the tale of Master Li Kao, who has a slight flaw in his character, and Number Ten Ox as they uncover the mysteries of a cursed town, a terrible duke, and a beautiful woman. Originally intended to be the first in a series of seven,
Bridge of Birds spawned only two sequels. The reclusive author explains some of his influences and poor luck
here. Also, for those of you familiar with the story, the original draft of
Bridge of Birds (
PDF version) is available online!
posted by robocop is bleeding
on Nov 18, 2005 -
18 comments
The Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant More than two decades after the last chapter, Stephen R. Donaldson is set to release the first of four novels in "The Final Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant." Bonus: a "trailer" of sorts (left side of page, midpoint). Hellfire & White Gold!
posted by davidmsc
on Sep 12, 2004 -
25 comments
The Fantastic in Art & Fiction - Cornell University's bank of nearly 300 images of the fantastic, the grotesque, the macabre, the marvelous and more
"from works spanning a period from medieval manuscripts and printed incunabulae, to the early twentieth century."
posted by madamjujujive
on Nov 16, 2003 -
6 comments
