Free fiction: Couple of recent stories of Stephen King

Neither particularly noteworthy, but well ... it's Stephen King. Of the two, I personally prefer "Premium Harmony".

1. "Premium Harmony"; download; The New Yorker, 9 November 2009; non genre: A man unhappy with his marriage that seems to be coming apart gets a far worse emotional shock.
2. "The Bone Church"; download; Playboy (US), November 2009: This is actually presented as verse, but reads well enough as prose too.
   
   An old man is describing an adventure of his younger years - when a group of more than 2 dozen traveled over the dangerous "greenroof" to some sort of gorge at the bottom of which lie a lot of bones of those long dead. Ghosts & sundry other dangers killed everyone except narrator.

Related: Stories of Stephen King.

Free fiction: Eando Binder, Gordon Dickson, Christopher Anvil, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Pierre Boulle, James P Hogan, John Campbell, C M Kornbluth

Via QuasarDragon: Comic book version of Eando Binder's excellent story "I, Robot" at Grantbridge Street & other misadventures. Apart from being a great story, this was the story that bootstrapped Isaac Asimov's robot stories. Based on reading of the first page, this illustrated version appears to be a faithful & close adaptation of the original story text.

Original story is from Amazing Stories, January 1939. Why does Grantbridge attribute it to Weird Fantasy, #11?

Via Free SF Reader: 3 stories from Gordon R Dickson's collection "The Human Edge" at Webscription:

1. "Danger—Human"; download; Astounding, December 1957.
2. "Sleight of Wit"; download; Analog, December 1961.
3. "In the Bone"; download; If,, October 1966.

Via Free SF Reader: 8 stories at Webscription from Christopher Anvil's collection "War Games":

1. "Truce By Boomerang"; download; Astounding, December 1957.
2. "A Rose By Any Other Name ..."; download; Astounding, January 1960.
3. "The New Member"; download; Galaxy, April 1967.
4. "Babel II"; download; Analog, August 1967.
5. "The Trojan Bombardment"; download; Galaxy, February 1967.
6. "Problem of Command"; download; Analog, November 1963.
7. "Uncalculated Risk"; download; Analog, March 1962.
8. "Torch"; download; Astounding, April 1957.

Via Free SF Reader: 5 stories at Webscription from Christopher Anvil's collection "The Trouble With Aliens" (Ed Eric Flint):

1. "The Prisoner"; download; Astounding, February 1956
2. "Seller's Market"; download; Astounding, December 1958
3. "Top Rung"; download; Astounding, July 1958
4. "Symbols"; download; Analog, September 1966
5. "Foghead"; download; Astounding, September 1958

Via Free SF Reader: MP3 audio versions of 5 stories of Ray Bradbury from The Zombie Astronaut Digest:

1. "The Whole Town's Sleeping"; download MP3.
2. "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl"; download MP3.
3. "The Flying Machine"; download MP3.
4. "Hail & Farewell"; download MP3.
5. "The Golden Apples of the Sun"; download MP3.

Via Free SF Reader: 2 stories of Stephen King from z0mbieastronaut:

1. "Jerusalem's Lot"; download.
2. "Children of the Corn"; download.

Via Dark Worlds: An audio version of the "Planet of the Apes" from BrokenSea. "an audio dramatization of the 1968 film". "Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle and original screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, this new audio series features additional scenes, original sound design". "Written, directed and produced by Bill Hollweg."

Via Free SF Reader: 2 stories of James P Hogan at Webscription:

1. "The Tree of Dreams"; download.
2. "Jailhouse Rock"; download.

Via QuasarDragon: "SF Signal is streaming The Thing (1982) from Hulu... Watch it HERE. (It is also available directly at Hulu Here, but you have to register to watch it there.)"

This movie is an adaptation of John W Campbell's excellent first contact story "Who Goes There?" Text of original story was already online.

Caution: The movie is DRMed - accessible only within US. Very likely connections anonymized with Tor will also have trouble accessing.

This QD link is actually a month old. I wanted to watch it before linking, but I'm not motivated enough to watch it via a US based proxy.

Via QuasarDragon: Downloadable video in multiple formats at Internet Archive of C M Kornbluth's story "The Little Black Bag".

I haven't seen the video, but this is among the better stories of Kornbluth - similar in spirit to several Henry Kuttner/C L Moore stories about mysterious gadgets.

Note: Relevant entries have been added to the list of stories from John Campbell's Astounding.

* Stephen King's "Mute" (short story, non-genre)

A lonely woman in her 50s, married 24 years with a daughter in college & husband mostly on tour, gets into an affair. And into blowing money with this boyfriend, a man of 60 - on lotteries, lingerie, shoes, ... Funds for this activity come by stealing her office funds. She has stolen $120 thousand over a 2 year period, & is about to be caught. That is when her husband learns of affair & embezzlement.

Soon, the wife will be living with her boyfriend in a motel. The man relieves his pent up story to a deaf/mute hitchhiker bum now asleep in his car - since the guy cannot really hear. Only, he can. Bum has been in & out of mental institutions over the years. A while later, the man will learn the hitchhiker has murdered his wife & her boyfriend, apparently out of gratitude for the ride!

Fact sheet.

First published: Playboy, December 2007.
Rating: B

Note: Why is this post so short?