Astonishing, Margret Hofheinz-Döring, 1964 (© Peter Mauch / Galerie Brigitte Mauch Göppingen)

Astonishing, Margret Hofheinz-Döring, 1964 (© Peter Mauch / Galerie Brigitte Mauch Göppingen)

Welcome! This is the first of my new series of posts reviewing recent free online fiction. By review I mean “make brief comment upon”, and by recent I mean “in the last week or so”.

This series will have a name: Libertas in Silico, which is almost-Latin for “freedom within the silicon”. (The major error in the translation is a historical accident which I have little desire to oppose.)

So, without further ado…
 

 
TOP PICK!

Clonepod: “Outside Chance”, by Matthew Johnson, read by Leslie Ann Moore. In an uncertain world, time-traveling “forecasters” scope out the wonders and terrors of the future, but it’s what they don’t bring back to “now” that makes all the difference. Professional-quality audio SF from a podcast run by kids? You betcha — it’s not just good (for their age), it’s good (period).
 

 
‘Zines:

 

 
Podcasts:

  • Escape Pod: “Navy Brat”, by Kay Kenyon, read by Dani Cutler. A generation ship story, with a strong start and some nice speculative flourishes, but it’s main novelty is that’s it’s a Young Adult generation ship story. Billed also as military SF, but it’s not a central theme.
  • PodCastle: “Dead Languages”, by Merrie Haskell, read by M.K. Hobson. Begins as a feminist commentary on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or perhaps a commentary on a feminist commentary on BtVS, but takes a turn somewhere and ditches any such pretense. Well read by M.K. Hobson; I really enjoyed the start but it eventually lost me. Also, a “PodCastle Miniature”: All Flee the Vocab. Quiz, by Kristine Dikeman, read by Alasdair Stuart. Fun and clever, and for 300 words/3 minutes, surprisingly meaty.
  • The Drabblecast: Trifecta V (various). Three stories for the price of one (that price being, um, free). All very weird but not much to shout about; the theme of this Trifecta seemed to be, “Taking tired old conceits to disturbing new extremes”. “Strange Love”, by Suzanne Vincent, read by Steve Anderson, is a decent aliens-among-us-but-ick! tale, with extra ick! (though Steve Anderson’s narration does my head in, again). “Cookie?”, by Jim Bernheimer, read by Norm Sherman, is a rather twisted child-communes-with-spirits story. “Forbidden Love”, by Ian Fossberg, read by Jesse Thorn, adds a brief epilogue to the antics of a familiar character but I was left wondering, why?

 

 
Next time… At the very least, more from PodCastle and Well Told Tales’ I Killed Awesome Man.

And finally… “Adventuring Party Politics: The Campaign is Getting Ugly”, by somehedgehog. The US presidential election Dungeons and Dragons campaign. How can you resist?
 

  Libertas in Silico, No. 1 On to No. 2

 
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