Steemit's Free Online Sci Fi Compendium - Vol #2
This is the second edition of a collection where I recommend free, legal, high-quality Science Fiction online. Missed the first one? Check it out! Enjoy!
Vernor Vinge - The Ungoverned
Al's Protection Racket operated out of Manhattan, Kansas. Despite the name, it was a small, insurance-oriented police service with about 20,000 customers, all within 100 kilometers of the main ship. But apparently "Al" was some kind of humorist: His ads had a gangster motif with his cops dressed like 20th century hoodlums. Wil Brierson guessed that it was all part of the nostalgia thing. Even the Michigan State Police—Wil's outfit—capitalized on the public's feeling of trust for old names, old traditions.
Vernor Vinge is an American math professor, computer scientist and science fiction author. He won five Hugo Awards, starting with his famous novella A Fire Upon the Deep. The ungoverned is a pro-market/anarcho-capitalist novella first published in 1985.and tells the story of the Republic of New Mexico (NMR) invading the peaceful anarcho-capitalist society in Kansas. It's available online as a sample from the Freedom Anthology
Elizabeth Bear - Tideline
They would have called her salvage, if there were anyone left to salvage her. But she was the last of the war machines, a three-legged oblate teardrop as big as a main battle tank, two big grabs and one fine manipulator folded like a spider’s palps beneath the turreted head that finished her pointed end, her polyceramic armor spiderwebbed like shatterproof glass. Unhelmed by her remote masters, she limped along the beach, dragging one fused limb. She was nearly derelict.
The beach was where she met Belvedere.
Elizabeth Bear is an American Author who won the 2005 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, then went on to win Hugo Awards for multiple works after that. Tideline is one of them: it won the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. It was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2007, and we see it as an audiobook in the Escape Pod Science Fiction Podcast.
Gregory Norman Bossert - The Telling
Mel peered around Cook’s hip as the butler stepped out of the master bedroom and carefully shut the door. Pearse stood for a minute, one pale hand still on the glass knob, the other unconsciously stroking his neckcloth smooth. Mel thought the hallway seemed lighter, as if the butler had closed all the darkness in the house behind the heavy oak door. The entire staff of the House was there, lining the two long walls of the hall, even Ralph the gardener and Neff who turned the roast and would on any other occasion be beaten if found upstairs. Pearse looked up then, eyes worn to a pale sharpness under heavy white brows, and Mel leaned back into the cover of Cook’s wide flank, safety from the butler’s gaze, from the strangeness of the moment.
Gregory Norman Bossert is an American writer and filmmaker. The Telling was first published in the Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine in Nov 2012, going on to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.
Ken Liu - The Paper Menagerie
One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.
Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.
“Kan, kan,” she said, as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of the fridge. For years, Mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas gifts and saved them on top of the fridge in a thick stack.
She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped crying and watched her, curious.
She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated, packed, tucked, rolled, and twisted until the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she lifted the folded-up paper packet to her mouth and blew into it, like a balloon.
Ken Liu is an American science-fiction writer, born in China and moved to the United States when he was eleven. His short story The Paper Menagerie was the first work of fiction, of any length, to win the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards. He's also known for his translation of the popular chinese novel The Three-Body Problem.
Cixin Liu - Mountain
“Today is the day I’m finally going to get you to tell me what is up with you never going on land,” the Captain declared, arching an eyebrow. “It’s been five years and the Bluewater has docked in heaven knows how many ports in more countries than I can count, yet you have never gone ashore; not even when we docked back in China. And not even last year, back in Qingdao when we were in for overhauls. You’re the last person I’d need to tell that the ship was a complete mess, and noisy, and still you stayed put, holed up in your cabin for two months,” the Captain continued, eying Feng Fan intensely he spoke.
Cixin Liu is a Chinese science fiction writer that specializes in hard fiction. He's well known for the novel The Three-Body Problem, which has a film adaptation in the works for 2017. Mountain is a short story that was first published in english in 2013. Here we see it online as part of Apex Magazine Issue 76.
And that's it for the second volume of Steemit's Free Online Sci Fi Compendium. What's your favorite story? What's your favorite Sci Fi author? Leave a comment and it might be feature in the next volume!
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