Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner ARP for getting free copies of Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, and The Secret History of Science Fiction, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel.
This week, we are giving away The Dog Said Bow-Wow and Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures by Michael Swanwick.
In The Dog Said Bow-Wow, great literature has never been this much fun before. The reigning master of short fiction reinvents science fiction and fantasy in a dazzling new collection unlike anything you’ve ever read. Time-traveling dinosaurs wreak havoc on a placid Vermont town. An ogre is murdered in a locked room in Faerie. An uncanny bordello proves as dangerous as it is alluring. Language is stolen from the builders of Babel. Those strangely loveable Post-Utopian scoundrels and con men, Darger and Surplus, swindle their way through London, Paris, and Arcadia. The Dog Said Bow-Wow includes three Hugo Award-winning stories and an original novelette of swashbuckling romance and adventure, “The Skysailor’s Tale.” Ranging from the hardest of science fiction to the highest of fantasy, this irresistible collection amuses and enlightens as only Michael Swanwick can.
Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures is a work of masterfully-sustained whimsy for adults unlike anything you’ve ever read. Cigar-Box Faust contains over seventy stories in fewer than a hundred pages. Often humorous, sometimes chilling, always entertaining, these are the works that have resurrected a moribund literary form and made it live and breathe again. The title piece is a five-minute condensation of a classic of Western literature, featuring a cigar-cutter as Mephistopheles, a box of matches in the roles of Helen of Troy, an Angel of the Lord, the Light of Ontology, and a cigar as Faust himself. Though it has previously been performed live by the author, this is its first appearance in print. There is also an abecedary showcasing Swanwick’s bravura imagination with a separate story for every letter of the alphabet, another set of tales for every planet in the Solar system, and a series of pieces that the author literally wrote in his sleep! To say nothing of a clutch of alternate autobiographies, a novella of decadence and corporate politics in a future Venice that has been boiled down to 416 words, Picasso and Philip K. Dick as existential heroes … and a rhyme for “orange.”
This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by Tachyon Publications. 
Tachyon is an independent publisher of science fiction and fantasy for grown-ups. Their books are unique, challenging, and have high literary value. Their books are also a lot of fun. Tachyon is known for their canonic anthologies that redefine everything from the Victorian whimsies of Steampunk to the “lit-fi” world of Slipstream. In publishing risky story collections they’ve helped to spark a short fiction renaissance. They’ve commissioned innovative original novels and brought out-of-print classics to a new generation of readers. Their award-winning authors include Peter S. Beagle, Charles de Lint, Michael Moorcock, Kage Baker, James Morrow, Tim Powers, Nancy Kress, Cory Doctorow, Carol Emshwiller, Thomas M. Disch, and many more. In 2010, Tachyon is celebrating fifteen years of publishing smart science fiction and fantasy. Stick around, they’re just getting started.
To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is comment in the space below. Make sure to tell us your email address so we can contact you if you win! We also recommend doing the following:
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Winner will be chosen randomly at 12pm on Friday, August 13 and notified via email. The winner must respond to our email within 48 hours, or a new winner will be randomly selected.
Good luck!
