Yuletide 2009 recommendations

I have recommendations from 2009's Yuletide rare-fandom fanfic exchange, only six months late!

These are all stories that I think are (a) very good and (b) able to be enjoyed people who don't usually read fanfic. (Note that there were a bunch of stories that are probably just as good but I didn't know or remember the canon well enough to be sure, so if something's left out, it's not necessarily a slight on it.) I'm arranging them in order of my guess at the number of people who will be familiar with the source. (The links are partly auto-generated and follow the format of story name, author, and then fandom.)

First, my favorites:

• Killing Elvis - David Hines (hradzka) - Alien series (1979 1986 1992) :: Absolutely hilarious epistolary fic involving research scientists, office politics, and alien taxidermy. Set in the Alien-movies verse but requires no knowledge of canon whatsoever. Very highly recommended. Mature (curse words, off-screen violence), 7200 words.
• The October Incident - neko_chelle (fivefootnothing) - National Public Radio RPF :: "It's This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program of course, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of different stories on that theme. Today's show: In the Land of the Living, stories of the October Incident, the zombie apocalypse and what happened afterwards. We've reached Act Three of our program: A Place at the Table. Moravia is a tiny town in Idaho, population two-hundred and eighteen. And that's pre-apocalypse numbers. But over the course of eighteen months, right from the very beginning of the apocalypse, Moravia's living citizens have received a few unorthodox gifts. Producer Sarah Koenig filed this report." --Sweet and spot-on. General audiences, 1135 words.

  (Honorable mention to "Wait Wait Don't Eat Me", written to the same prompt, which was actually linked by Wait Wait Don't Tell Me itself; it's just a show I don't listen to.)

The rest follow behind cuts, because there are many:

( Computers (2): Oregon Trail game; Lovelace and Babbage web comic )

( Mythology and fairy tales (6) )

( Movies and music (3): Grosse Pointe Blank, Wallace and Gromit, 'Thunder Road' )

( TV (4): White Collar, Leverage, The Middleman )

( Books (15) )