Yog's Notebook, blog edition

The Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy take place every year at WorldCon. This year it's happening August 30-September 3 in Japan. Anyone with a WorldCon membership is eligible to vote, and that includes people who purchase a supporting (non-attending) membership. So for $50 you could help decide who wins the awards.

Even if you won't be voting or attending, the Nippon2007 site has a page listing all the nominated works, with links to read all of the short stories and some of the novels for free online. I can attest that Glasshouse is excellent, and I've enjoyed other work by many of the other authors.

Labels: awards, books, hugo, science fiction, stories

This week's post is a roundup of links to some fine sf offerings available for free online. They generally fall into two categories: works that authors have decided to release under a Creative Commons (or similar) license, and works that are in the public domain due to their age. Most people will be comfortable reading a short story or two on their computer, but for longer book-length works, you might prefer to use a PDA or video iPod. This is also a way to sample several chapters of a book before buying a print copy.

A good starting point is manybooks.net. Their science fiction section contains 274 modern and historical works. These can be downloaded pre-formatted for a variety of ebook readers, or as a PDF. The collection includes Accelerando, winner of the 2006 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and Blindsight, nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

There are also several e-zines that publish a rotating selection of stories, available for free on the web. Strange Horizons, one of the longest-running and most recognized publications in this category, updates weekly. Subterranean Press recently switched their quarterly magazine from print to the web. The spring issue features stories and essays by Elizabeth Bear, Charles Stross, Mike Resnick, and Bruce Sterling. Ideomancer and Coyote Wild are also worth checking out.

Finally, authors also maintain collections of their work available online. Cory Doctrow shares his work primarily through a podcast, but text versions of several of his stories and novels also exist. John Scalzi has a novel and several stories linked from his site. And members of the Science Fiction Writers Association (SFWA) recently declared an "International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day", wherein science fiction writers who have published work for pay each offered their work online for free. The roundup of contributions is on Jo Walton's blog.

I've found these resources to be a great way to discover new authors. There are several writers whose books I purchased specifically because I liked the work they had online. I hope this helps other people find new and interesting things to read too.

Labels: books, ebooks, free, science fiction, sf