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Repository of si fi novels and stories on homepage with short stories (SF, fantasy and horror), complete novels and, additionally, sample texts of further novels. The site also gives access to a collection of online poems (short poems, death poems, war poems, city poems, nature poems and assorted other modern poems.) |
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The links below click through to either the full text of a novel to read free online or to a generous sample of chapters from a novel. Three links are to the full text of one of the novels in the ten-volume fantasy series Chronicles of an Age of Darkness by Hugh Cook. Although these books are part of a series, each is a complete story in its own right, complete with a beginning, a middle and an end, and each can be read on its own without reference to any of the other books in the series. The three Chronicles books are THE WORDSMITHS AND THE WARGUILD (published in the USA in two volumes, The Questing Hero and The Hero's Return), which is fantasy complete with dragons, magic and the wizard of Drum; The Worshippers and the Way, which is military SF; and The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster, a huge and sometimes brutal saga telling the story of a struggle for an empire. Additionally, there are the first thirty chapters of Bamboo Horses, and alternative reality novel. Fantasy set in a world which has cellphones and an Internet, like ours, but is a bit different. Unlike us, these people do not eat with chopsticks but with scissors. There are also the first thirty chapters of the suicide bomber novel To Find and Wake the Dreamer. This is set in a fantasy world which has TV, a subway system and so forth. In this novel, a certain proportion of the population is possessed of the innate capacity to make themselves explode. And some of these are motivated by religious fanaticism to do exactly that. This novel contains graphic violence and torture, and in it we see the inept politicians of the nation state over-react and mismanage the terrorist threat. The terrorist threat, though, is emphatically real, and toward the end there is a nuclear standoff. The author bills this work as "the ultimate fantasy novel," and believes it deserves that designation. |
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NOVELS Samples and full texts |
Questing Hero The Wordsmiths and the Warguild |
Military SF The Worshippers and the Way |
250,000 words SwordAndSorcery The Witchlord and the Weaponmaster |
30 sample chapters Murder Mystery Bamboo Horses |
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Paranormal Religious Fanatics Unleashed 30 Sample Chapters Suicide Bomber Novel To Find and Wake the Dreamer |
Sample chapters SF novel |
fan site Online encyclopedia for the Chronicles: Hugh Cook |
Hugh Cook |
Hugh Cook |
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Also to be found online is the full text of Hugh Cook's brain cancer memoir, Cancer Patient. This goes through the whole cancer experience, from the initial problem of obtaining a diagnosis to neurosurgery, chemotherapy, treatment with radiation delivered directly to the brain and the achievement of remission. The full text of this book is free to read online. Just click on the following link:
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short poems |
school poems |
city poems |
nature poems |
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war poems |
cancer poems |
modern poems |
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Paperback Book or US $5 PDF file |
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The full texts of 30 of the 65 stories in THE SUCCUBUS AND OTHER STORIES are online here. These are high-quality literary stories, a mixture of fantasy, science fiction, horror and the bizarre. These stories often deal with mature themes which are best suited for a mature audience. |
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Click any link to get instant access to the full text of the story.
Story One — THE SUCCUBUS Story of sexual politics. A big slab of a story, about 8,250 words. HOWIE GLENST AND THE WOMAN MADE FROM GLASS Virtual reality story of about 2,580 words. CONSENTING ADULTS Very brief story about a date which goes horribly wrong. About 900 words. If theft is the sincerest form of flattery, I should feel flattered that this story has been plagiarized online, word for word, at least twice that I know of, my work passed off as someone else's. In case you didn't know, that's one of the sins for which you burn in Hell. IF YOUR BABY WILL NOT SLEEP Everyone writes sex stories but baby stories are fewer on the ground. A micro fiction of 217 words written during the intensely stressful first few months of parenting. DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL A story about the trials of parenting with an interesting science fiction twist. About 3.000 words. Written at a time when the author was getting overwhelmed by the initial challenges of fatherhood. POGY BOBS AND THE HYENA OF DEATH Serial killer story in which a precocious adolescent kid ultimately does a deal with the devil. A reasonably substantial story at about 6,300 words. HONEYMOON Seriously horrific horror story, definitely not for the squeamish. A short 778 words. SUICIDE HOTEL I spent seven years living in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, where, every year, hundreds of people inconvenience fellow citizens by jumping in front of trains. What every society needs is specialized hotel facilities where people can take care of that kind of self-destruction without inconveniencing their fellow citizens. Welcome to the suicide hotel! 931 words. THE SUICIDE BOMBER A story about the motiveless malignancy of the suicide bomber, the malignant death freak we do not, cannot, will never understand. 1,697 words. THE RAT Short story about a rat. The rat, which is not trying to commit suicide, dies. 524 words. THE KIDNEY BEAN DIET If this seriously disturbing murder story does not seriously disturb you then you are a seriously disturbed person. A story of 1,850 words. GOLF COURSE I think golf is pretty weird. This golf story is pretty weird, too. 2,739 words. OTHER LIVES Waking in the morning to find blood all over the place. A very clever fantasy story, challenging and a little too complex for some tastes. Demonically complicated, I think we could say. HER MINT-GREEN BREATH Corporate wetwork and a very troubled marriage. HARRIET'S ARMPIT Harriet gets started with one murder, that of her husband, but it most certainly does not stop there. 1,704 words. HOT CARDBOARD Heartless hard-boiled story of lust and violence in the big city. 1,609 words. SANTA CLAUS, SEX CRIMINAL Santa as the damned pedophile, doomed to an eternity of battlefields. You just got your leg blown off? Okay, Santa is here to hand you a box of chocolates. SWEETNESS AND LIGHT Literature gets cleaned up as Shakespeare gets censored into purity. All that nasty stuff? It goes. (Not a new idea. Historically, Thomas Bowdler, a "let's clean up Shakespeare for the family" editor, was hard at work on this some time during his own lifetime, 1754-1825.) 3,462 words. JORGELVACE A science fiction story about reality mutating around you. The game has changed, obviously, but how, exactly? And how are you going to handle it? 3,555 words. THAT NIGHTMARE KNOWN AS LIFE So your eyes open and you are awake, but who are you and where are you? In which nation is this mountain? And what are you doing on the mountain? And how are you ever going to get home again? 9,250 words. THE TRIAL OF EDGAR ALLAN POE Edgar is on trial on a very serious charge, and he is on trial for his life. This SF story runs to 7,393 words. SHOTGUN AL'S LAST PICNIC A classic science fiction scenario: the multi-generational spaceship heading out into the hard vacuum, away from the sun. Sounded like a good idea to the scientists who got on board it. But Al, he wasn't consulted about this. So there are consequences. 6,559 words. Warning: this story features an extremely gruesome murder. HEROES OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM Have time travel machine, will travel. Where? To New York. A story which, having visited New York, I wrote and sold to a New York editor, Gorden val Gelder of FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, in the pages of which this story first appeared back in 1998. A reasonably substantial story at 5,017 words. BAD SEX A science fiction clone story. The guy who has been cloned is John Milton, author of the epic poem PARADISE LOST. 5,285 words. NIGHT ON BEAR MOUNTAIN A virtual reality story about, amongst other things, survival in the great outdoors. This fairly substantial story runs to 7,903 words. HUNTING ANDREW A virtual reality SF story of 3,705 words. HOUSE HUNTING This story of 3,479 words is about the nightmarish process of looking for a house to buy. HIS NAME WAS MAC Reality gets pretty alternative as we take a fresh look at the homeless person problem. A story of 1,889 words. BOXES One editor rejected this saying it was too obvious right from the start exactly what was happening. Another rejected it because he read it through three times and quite simply could not understand what was going on. Can't please everyone. The editor who accepted it was Graeme Hurry who published it in KIMOTA in 2000. A story of 1,314 words about a man in an extremely alienated situation. LIFE ON PLANET EARTH Reality gets totally alternative. An SF story about the consequences of an alien invasion of our planet. A story of 3,386 words first published online in 2003. In 2004 this story was published for a second time in THIRTEEN, ed. Andrew Hannon. The paperback book The Succubus and Other Stories can be purchased from Amazon.com . The printed book has 628 pages and is very good value for money. It contains, in all, a total of 65 stories. |
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full text online Cancer Patient Facing cancer and battling death |
Survivorhood Blog Cancer appears to have returned, and blindness seems to threaten |
Full text of Cancer Patientis free to read online. An autobiographical account of cns lymphoma.
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CNS lymphoma is a cancer of the lymph which affects the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord. |
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brain cancer memoir |
brain cancer blog |
cancer memoir |
non-fiction |
about brain cancer |
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buy at Amazon CANADA Hugh Cook |
buy at Amazon BRITAIN HUGH COOK |
buy at Amazon UNITED STATES HUGH COOK |