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| Bob Eggleton |
Hi Mom,
Need summer reading?
I am here for you.
It is fitting that I share this post on finding "free" science fiction on my Dad's 83rd birthday.
HAPPY 83RD BIRTHDAY DAD!
Without my Dad's influence in my life, I might not have started reading science fiction. But from a young age, there were science fiction books in my house, lots of them.
I am sort of late to the party becoming a Charles Stross fan. I just discovered him a couple of years ago and started to make way through the Laundry Files books, On Warren Ellis' recommendation I also read Accelerando, which I believe I read more like four-five years ago long before I started following Stross' blog and reading the Laundry Files series.
Ellis writes about why he loves Accelerando here AT THIS LINK. It's worth examining.
Though this post that follows appeared on Stross' blog, it's actually written by this other guy.
But in addition to his examination of "free" SF, I followed with some of the best comments that shares even more free science fiction (or SF).
BTW, SF is the preferred acronym for science fiction not sci-fi.
We live in a digital world. You can read on tablets; you can read on phones. You can even print to paper.
I find that after a day during which I am looking at screens for eight to ten hours, I need to get my eyes off screens as I relax before bed, so I still like books and paper.
from - http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/06/sf-for-nothing-stories-for-fre.html
SF For Nothing, Stories For Free
Hello strange people: by way of introduction, I am Dan Ritter, occasionally seen in the comments section as -dsr-. I live outside of Boston and work in Cambridge, doing various bits of computer work just off of the MIT campus for a small financial software firm -- if you don't work for a bank or brokerage, you probably haven't heard of it.
I once suggested to Charlie that since the Indian Navy was having budget problems, they might agree to sell a de-militarized Krivak-class frigate, which would make an excellent evil billionaire's yacht.
Today my subject is "free SF", by which I mean stories that you don't have to pay money to read. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are in the public domain, or that the author has given up copyright; it just means free of required monetary cost. Some authors do that as a sort of advertisement for their work; some do it because it makes them happy, some do it because they don't want to put it up for sale (or can't -- that's a whole class), and some are doing it for the exposure so that they can build an audience. All of this is only viable because the Internet has such a low marginal cost. For me, the best thing about free SF is that I have a zero-risk opportunity to read new authors, and the second best thing is that I have more money to buy books.
There are some free stories by Charlie over on the sidebar, of course. I like TOAST quite a lot, but I recommend you stay away from Scratch Monkey. (The title derives from the sad tale of Mabel the swimming monkey -- you may gurgle that at your own emotional risk.) Tor.com has published some of his short stories and novellae, too -- Equoid, Overtime, and Down on the Farm, among others.
The tradition of magazines publishing stories, reviews and discussion is still alive, and some of them are freely available.
Strange Horizons publishes online for free, and is run exclusively on donations. They occasionally run fundraisers where content is unlocked progressively as donations come in. You may have heard of some of their authors -- Saladin Ahmed, Eleanor Arnason, Mishell Baker, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, among many others.
Clarkesworld is an SF magazine published online for free, and you can buy epub copies for reasonable fees, subscribe directly for automatic delivery, and buy an annual collection in print or epub. They've run stories by Kij Johnson, Tobias Buckell, Aliette De Bodard, Ken MacLeod, Elizabeth Bear.
Uncanny Magazine is also online for free -- you can read the first half immediately on the publication date, as an inducement to buy the epub or PDF version, and the second half becomes free a month later. Naomi Novik, Nalo Hopkinson, Zen Cho and overachiever Elizabeth Bear have all been in there in the recent past.
Once upon a time, SF novels were shorter. Slaughterhouse Five is actually just under the 50K word threshold that the Hugos use for novels. The reasons for the growth has been adequately covered here in the past. The tradition of serializing novels in magazines obviously works better when the novels are shorter, but authors can now put things online without limit. Here are some that I've particularly enjoyed:
Over at qntm.org, Sam Hughes has a bunch of short stories and two excellent novels, which he released in serial fashion: Fine Structure and Ra. What I'd really like to direct your attention to is Ra.
In 1970 or so, magic is discovered. This makes a lot of people very unhappy. Most are unhappy because their world-view is based on science, and they now need to fit non-supernatural explanations to these events. Naturally, research leads to academics, and academics means degree programs. Ra starts off as the story of Laura Ferno, Ph.D candidate in Applied Thaumic Engineering with an eye towards harnessing magic to build spacecraft, and her sister Natalie who is an academic on the theoretical side of magic. One night Laura is mugged, she defends herself with magic spells, and before you know it ten chapters have gone by and the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
If you have a couple of weeks available to read a compelling story about the problems of superheroes and supervillains and the nearly nonexistent line dividing them, let me recommend Worm. It in turn has inspired remarkably good fanfiction: Taylor Varga is nearly as long (1.5 million words) which is not yet finished.
One final bit of fan fiction: Honor Among Thieves. If you've read through David Weber's Honor Harrington series and wished that he would finally wrap it all up, you're doubly lucky. First, it looks like his latest entry is the beginning of the end. Second, in 2015 an author with the pen name of Bracketyjack wrote a wholly satisfying series conclusion in a style almost but not quite exactly like Weber -- it's less annoying, on the whole -- taking about two books worth of words to do it.
What have you read for free lately? And where did you get it?
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I've subscribed for a while to the monthly http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/ - they have epub/pdf subscriptions, but release most of the content for free, online reading during the course of the month after release.
A Practical Guide to Evil is a pretty well crafted fantasy story.
Can be found here: https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com
Shadow Unit
http://www.shadowunit.org
http://www.shadowunit.org
Unsong
http://unsongbook.com
http://unsongbook.com
Girl Genius
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com
Well for some reason I've recently read Jack London's dystopian political thriller The Iron Heel. Since it's from 1909-ish it's in the public domain. Slightly unsatisfying in structure, it does a fair job of predicting fascism. Worse news is that the Oligarchs aka The Iron Heel control the world for about three hundred years before being overthrown.
Apex magazine posts it's content throughout the month; Only today I was reading Jacqueline Carey's story Suzie Q, which was good though [lowers voice] Fantasy. Also sexually explicit for those who like to know before reading.
Been reading a few other "classics" that are out of copyright - The Portrait of Dorian Grey (spends a lot of time talking about Dorian's love of jewels and religious vestements), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (not much there that the popular idea of the story doesn't already have), and Jules Verne's Robur The Conquerer, a poor aerial version of the much superior 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, though Robur's flying machine, The Albatross is quite entertaining.
Also (apologies for self promotion, please delete if inapropriate) I have seven parts of a space opera serial I've written, Chronicles of the Deep Patrol online for free. Basically the concept is what if the characters in a Star Trek type universe realised how deeply weird things were. The main protagonist is Tommy "Ray" Gunn, which is probably the worst joke of the series, and says something about the flavour.
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1088 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1806.26 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
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