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Category Archive: Free Fiction
Terry Bisson’s Billy’s Book, as illustrated by the Mad Professor
Posted by Paul Raven on July 20th, 2010 at 10:37
Awesome things can happen when oddball science fiction writers get together. Terry Bisson and Rudy Rucker have been friends for years, and when Rucker read Bisson’s Billy’s Book, he decided it was ripe for illustration… so, enter Billy’s Picture Book, a free ebook version of the Bisson collection rounded out with the madcap technicolour surrealism of Rucker’s paintings. Lots of fun for young readers… as well as the young at heart.
Physical copies of our original limited edition binding of Billy’s Book are still available, by the way – click here to order one.
A taster from Matthew Hughes’ new Archonate novella Quartet & Triptych
Posted by Paul Raven on June 3rd, 2010 at 15:21
I’m always very conscious of the fact that I shouldn’t play favourites when it comes to PS authors… but as I’ve been a fan of Matthew Hughes‘ Archonate stories since stumbling across a copy of Black Brillion in the library where I used to work (long before I joined Team PS), I figure I’m allowed to have a little leeway in his case. It can be our little secret, OK?
So, you can imagine I’m pretty stoked that we’re publishing another of Matthew’s novellas later this year. Quartet & Triptych sees the return of corpulent con-man Luff Imbry in a starring role, and you can read the first 5,000 words of the book over at Matthew’s Archonate website.
When you’re all done reading (or before you start, if you have the confidence in quality that comes from having read Matthew Hughes before), click here to pre-order an unsigned hardback copy of Quartet & Triptych at £12, or click here for the signed and jacketed edition at £25. Top-grade fiction, beautifully bound in limited editions – what more could you ask for?
Thirty-One Rules for Fulfilling Your Destiny from Nancy Jane Moore
Posted by Paul Raven on February 19th, 2009 at 13:25
Nancy Jane Moore is one of the contributors to the excellent Book View Cafe, which should be a must-visit website for fans of quality free fiction on the web.
Among her recent additions there is a reproduction of her flash-fiction piece “Thirty-One Rules for Fulfilling Your Destiny”, which is taken from the PS Showcase collection of Nancy’s short stories, Conscientious Inconsistencies.
So go take a look, then pop back and snare a copy of Conscientious Inconsistencies by clicking through on the links below!
- Conscientious Inconsistencies (hardcover) – [ £10 / $15 approx. ]
- Conscientious Inconsistencies (jacketed hardcover) – [ £25 / $37.50 approx. ]
Joe Hill giving away the first hit of Gunpowder
Posted by Paul Raven on January 2nd, 2009 at 11:04
If you’re hankering for a copy of Joe Hill’s latest novella Gunpowder, you’d best move fast – all the limited edition copies are long gone, and the hardcover editions are shifting steadily as well.
If you’re the sort who likes to try before you buy, you can pick up a little pinch of Gunpowder over at Joe Hill’s website, where the first page of the story eagerly awaits your eyeballs. In Joe’s own words:
Gunpowder is an old school science fiction story. Like, spaceships and people on faraway planets. You were warned.
Click through below to order your copy – once they’re gone, they’re gone!
- Gunpowder (hardcover) - [ £12 / $18 approx ]
Free Paul McAuley fiction from Postscripts #15
Posted by Paul Raven on August 20th, 2008 at 7:15
If you’ve a hunger for some free science fiction, you’re in luck – Paul McAuley has posted up another story on his webspace. “A Brief Guide To Other Histories” is one of the stories featured in Postscripts #15, and is set in the same universe as his recent novel Cowboy Angels. Here’s how it begins:
My platoon had been in the American Bund sheaf for two weeks before it suffered its first major incident. It was gruesome and it robbed us of our innocence, but it was only the beginning of something stranger and deeper.
We’d come through the Turing gate at Brookhaven with the rest of the Third Brigade, First Armor Division, second battalion, as part of the ongoing operation to bring peace and reconciliation to that particular version of America’s history. Seventeen PFCs and Spec 4s, and me, their commanding officer. We were all kids. I was the oldest, and I’d just turned twenty-four. Most of us hadn’t been through the mirror before, and it put the zap on our heads. This was America, but it wasn’t our version of America. New York, but not our version of New York. There were buildings I recognised from my visits to the city back in the Real. The Chrysler Building. The Empire State. St Patrick’s Cathedral. Yellow taxis jostled on the streets, manholes vented plumes of steam, and Central Park was right where it should have been, although it had been stripped of trees by people desperate for firewood in the last days of the war, and there was a refugee camp sprawled across Sheep Meadow. But although the Statue of Liberty stood out in the Hudson, she was holding up a sword instead of a torch. The sword was a hundred feet long, and forged out of stainless steel that shone like cold flame. The skyline was different, too. Lower. Instead of glass and steel skyscrapers, brutal chunks of marble and white stone hunched like giant toads: monumental railroad stations, government buildings, and palaces. Some were burnt out or shattered by bombs. The rest were holed by artillery shells and pockmarked by small-arms fire.
I’ll bet you didn’t have “explore alternate histories of the United States” on your list of things-to-do today (not in this universe, anyway), but if you’ve a spare half hour, where better to spend it than in a Paul McAuley story?
If you develop a taste for his work in the process, there’s more of McAuley’s fiction – and lots of other great science fiction stories – in Postscripts #15, so click through below and buy one:
- Postscripts #15 – multi-autograph slipcased hardcover [£75 / US$150 approx.]
- Postscripts #15 – signed hardcover [£30 / US$60 approx.]
- Postscripts #15 – hardcover [£15 / US$30 approx.]