The Nominees for the 2009 Hugo Awards were announced a few days ago, and they include (as always) an amazing collection of stories. Some of them belong to Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and John Scalzi, to name but a few. Big Dumb Object has some comments worth noting. Now I need to read everything on the lists; a good way to start is by grabbing the links from Anticipation SF, and as always the SF Signal Hugo page has links to all the free online reading version of the nominees stories…
There are many good things to read online, or to download for reading offline, and Free SF has recently added a number of them, including works by Walter Jon Williams, James Patrick Kelly, and Felix Castor, to name a few. One of my favorite places to go are the online Ezines, like Flurb. Headed up by Rudy Ruker, Flurb concentrates on quality stories that for one reason or another would be very hard to get into a normal print magazine. Then there is Clarkesworld, currently with Herding Vegetable Sheep along with some other stories, at least one in audio format each month. Another good one is Raygun Revival, concentrating on golden-age space opera. Strange Horizons usually only has one story and one poem per edition, but it comes out once a week, so you still get a months worth of reading. There are many more, but that should get you started.
SF Signal has posted a huge list of things you can read online for free. It includes stories by Neil Ayres, Ben Bova, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Michael A. Burstein, Greg Egan, and that’s only the first few letters of the alphabet. In another entry they have links to the 3 Novelettes and 4 short stories posted on Asimov’s nominated for the Nebula Award this year, also free reading. In a third, an announcement about Will F Jenkins Day in Virginia, but they included links to several of Murray Leinster’s stories which are again (surprise) free to read online.
Neil Gaiman’s story The Day The Saucers Came is online for free reading. It is a wonderful little short story (or perhaps a poem), and the illustrations are perfect for the tale. And here is the first Coraline trailer Neil himself likes…
There are tons of places to watch science fiction online, with each site having its share. Sometimes it can be hard to find what you are looking for, but the Crotchety Old Fan’s Classic Science Fiction Channel makes it a bit easier. He doesn’t host the films or TV shows himself, but links to the content on Archive.org, Hulu, Veoh, Classic Cinema Online, and more, filtering it for the good stuff so you don’t have to hunt for it. There is a new issue of Antipodian SF online, with a new URL for the down-under site. They are still tweaking the new layout, but the content (excellent free flash-sf stories) is all in place for the December issue. If you are looking for back issues, they are archived at Pandora, the National Library of Australia’s online repository. Not to be confused with the Pandora Internet Radio service, and yes, that link is to my indi/anime/jrock oriented station.
A few links to let you read new SciFi online for free…
To start, there is the Infinite Matrix, which has both free online stories to read, and a lot of great articles for your enjoyment. Then there is Free SF Online, a German group contributing to the cause. And let us not forget Infinity Plus, a British site with a lot of good stories to share. And that doesn’t even go into such things as Star Harbor, a great superheroic and fantasy fiction story team, or Nation States, a killer online Game environment! Enjoy!