The 2009 Nebula Awards Finalists

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Filed under Free Finds, SF News

Yesterday, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced the finalists for the Nebula Awards, an annual award to celebrate excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing. The very fine folks at SF Signal have saved me a bit of time by gathering links to all all of the nominated works that are available to read online for free.

Please jump over to SF Signal and enjoy the available works from the 2009 Nebula finalists! In the future I’ll have more for you about the SWFA and SF Signal, so stay tuned!

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Cory Doctorow/Craphound.com

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Filed under Free Finds

Cory Doctorow

Photo by Jonathan Worth

Our source of free sci-fi this time around is an author by the name of Cory Doctorow. Unless your taste in science fiction still lies in the Golden Age or you’ve never seen XKCD, you should recognize that name. A native Canadian now living in London, Cory’s latest novel, Makers, was just published in October of 2009.

Saying that Cory Doctorow keeps busy would be like saying that John Scalzi likes bacon. To only call him a best selling author of award-winning science-fiction would be a disservice. He is also a co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing, a technology activist, a blogger, a podcaster and has written for many publications, including Wired magazine and The New York Times.

His first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, was released to bookstores and as an internet download simultaneously in January 2003, under a Creative Commons license. Cory talks about it on his site here. A short excerpt follows:

“Why am I doing this thing? Well, it’s a long story, but to shorten it up: first-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don’t have a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth. I’m not bad at word-of-mouth. I have a blog, Boing Boing, where I do a lot of word-of-mouthing. I compulsively tell friends and strangers about things that I like.”

He has followed suit with each of his subsequent novels and most of his short fiction, giving away his work to bring it to the attention of readers who may not have otherwise been exposed to it. While there is always the chance he may lose sales to people won’t buy the physical book once they download the electronic version, enough of his fans are buying his books to keep his publisher happy.

When you couple Doctorow’s enthusiasm for getting his novels in front of his readers with his tireless activism for copyright reform and the rights of citizens to perform acts as simple as taking a picture in public, you have admire and respect what he does.

You can download his novels here. If you find one you like and want more, head to your favorite bookseller and pick up one of his books so he can keep on making his works available for free.

Name: Cory Doctorow
Links: http://craphound.com, http://www.boingboing.net
Availability: All of his novels are available as DRM-free downloads and/or free to read on the web.
Rating: 5 out of 5
The Last Word: Cory Doctorow promotes his writing by giving it away. If you enjoy his work, buy one of his books so that he can keep making more.

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Subterranean Press Magazine

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Filed under Free Finds

Subterranean Press is a specialty publisher that handles many authors in the horror, suspense, dark mystery and science fiction genres. They have a fine reputation for their quality work and from what I have read, the authors they work with have spoken very highly of how Subterranean treats them. From personal experience I can say that their work lives up to their reputation and, with one exception, would not hesitate to do business with them again.

But I am not here to talk about what you can buy from Subterranean. I’m here to talk about what you can get from them for free! And as it turns out, they have plenty to keep you busy. In addition to their beautiful limited editions, they also publish Subterranean Press Magazine, a free online quarterly packed with columns, interviews, reviews and fiction.

The fiction is usually in the form of short stories or novellas, with the occasional audio download made available. And the talent is top notch – the Winter 2010 issue features the works of Mike Resnick, Ian R MacLeod, Neal Barrett, Jr., the recently deceased Kage Baker, Barbara Roden, K. J. Bishop, and John Scalzi reading an abridged version of his recently published chapbook, Judge Sn Goes Golfing.

My favorite story of the current Winter 2010 issue is The Bohemian Astrobleme by Kage Baker. It details an account of members of the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society, a Victorian Era group charged with “the improvement of the human condition through the secret use of technologia.” Many of the story elements seem very Verne-like, but Baker does an outstanding job of meshing the 165 year old setting with the expectations of her 21st century audience. Her voice will be missed.

All of the stories appear on their own web page and are not made available for separate downloads. The only exceptions are the audio files, which are downloadable MP3s. There are currently 13 issues online, starting with the Winter 2007 issue.

Don’t confuse Subterranean’s free online magazine with their print edition. The current issue of their print edition, Issue #8, has been on pre-order status since at least September of 2008, when I ordered it. I eventually wound up canceling the order. Except for this, I fully recommend Subterranean for your limited/special edition book purchases as well as the free content they publish on their site.

Name: Subterranean Press Magazine
Link: http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine
Availability: Web Only except for audio, downloadable as MP3 files.
Rating: 4 out of 5
The Last Word: Downloadable DRM-free files would have earned them a 5.

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First!

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Filed under Fuddster Dot Com

Welcome to my first post on this latest edition of Fuddster Dot Com. I’m your host Lonnie, and I have a game plan. As I mentioned on the front page, I’ll be blogging about all the free sources of science fiction I’ve found on the web. I’ll write short reviews about each site, follow up with something about one of the stories or authors I’ve found there, then I’ll finally close up with a little summary.

The summary will include the following: the name of the site; a link to the site; the formats that the stories are in; a rating from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest; and The Last Word, a one sentence impression about the site.

This is all subject to change over time as I see what works, what doesn’t and what, if any, feedback I receive.

One other thing to know is that I don’t have a smart phone or e-book reader right now, so at this point all of my reviews are biased towards reading on desktop or laptop computers. Quaint, I know, but someday I hope to drag myself into the future.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and I hope you decide to stick around!

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