Fandom: THE X-FILES
Pairing: n/a
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: Missing Time

Why this must be read: You often hear fans praise a fic by saying it's so good it should have been an episode. Diaspora is actually better than that. It's the episode "Kaddish" should have been. It blends Jewish history and culture with an x-file, and does so with grace, black humor, and suspense.

Diaspora is written in script format, and even in that spartan form, LoneGunGuy gets so much detail and atmosphere into the story that you can see and hear it, as clearly as if you were actually watching it. I'm not a fan of fics written as scripts, but this one doesn't suffer from the structure. The story is so compelling that the format nearly becomes invisible.

Faintly -- so faintly that it might almost be a trick of the imagination -- the soft regular TICKING of a metronome slices through the darkness.

LoneGunGuy's website only has one of his stories on it, and the rest are scattered far and wide across the internet. The X-Files archive Gossamer still has his fic up, but they don't allow direct linking so we're going to have to do this the hard way.

LoneGunGuy's fic is on this page. Scroll waaaay down. Trust me, Diaspora is worth the trouble.

Fandom: LORD OF THE RINGS
Pairing: Faramir/Eowyn
Author on LJ: altariel1
Author Website: Altariel and Isabeau - Fiction

Why this must be read:

In the book, Eowyn and Faramir have a nearly perfect fairy-tale ending, but we never see what happens afterwards. The war has taken its toll on both of them, and they come from very cultures that are, at heart, quite different. This story chronicles their journey together, with romance, angst, and sometimes a wicked sense of humor, too. The POV shifts in each chapter, mostly between Faramir to Eowyn, and the characterizations feel very authentic throughout. At 70,000 words, this is no small time investment, but the nice happy sigh you'll breathe at the end is well worth it.

A Game of Chess

A short follow-up, set some time later: Fair Game

Fandom: OZ
Pairing: n/a
Author on LJ: basingstoke
Author Website: Land of Basingstoke
Why this must be read:

(Note: I'm not 100% sure about the "R" rating, but that's the rating I would have given it...)

This is a story that may have slipped under the radar of many people in Oz fandom, I think, simply because it wasn't posted in one of the usual Oz Yahoo groups. It was written for the Yuletide Treasure story exchange and posted this past January, and...man, if you haven't discovered it yet, you are missing what is, in my opinion, one of the most incredible Beecher stories ever. It isn't a long story—it covers a very brief period of time (Beecher's third day in Oz)—but it does an amazing job of making you feel every minute of Beecher's misery on a visceral level, with sharp, spare descriptions of the horror his life has become. This period in the series isn't written about very often in fic; season 1 itself is even hard for some people to watch, because of everything Beecher goes through. This story, although it doesn't flinch away from a thing, also doesn't overplay anything for drama. You can already feel the qualities of a horrible, surrealistic kind of routine taking form: The lights go out. Schillinger rapes you. You wake up in the morning after dreaming about your wife and children. Time for breakfast. Etcetera. For four to fifteen years...

No, like many Oz stories, this is not something many people are going to come away from whistling a happy tune—unless you're like me, of course, in which case you're just going to be ecstatic beyond all reason that a story like this was written in the first place. It gives this crucial period in the development of Beecher's character the kind of brilliant treatment it deserves.

And the Evening and the Morning Were the Third Day

Fandom: KNIGHT RIDER
Pairing: None
Author on LJ: n/a
Author Website: Tomy and Asp's Knight Fic

Why this must be read:

Written for Janeway's Partnership Challenge, "Convergence" offers a What If? look that tantalizes and scintillates the reader. blazingskies's challenge was to write a story on the premise of: What if Kitt had never been paired with Michael for some reason? What if he was given a different driver? How would this affect his personality, his developing emotions. What would then happen if, years later, Kitt were to meet Michael Long on a mission...

Asp's response to that challenge was too damn good for words. In fact, it was nominated for a few awards -- er, about seven. :P So just go read it and see what I mean.

Link to Story: Convergence by Asp