Free Science Fiction

It’s a great time to be poor, tight or miserly because there’s lots of free science fiction offerings on the Internet.  Heinlein was wrong about that free lunch deal.  Just subscribing to two web sites, SF Site and SFF Audio via RSS feeds will keep you informed of more good free SF&F reading and listening than you can handle, even if you’re out-of-work or out-of-school.  All you’ve got to do is read the regular posts and these sites will spot the goodies for you. 

Hell, a couple months ago Tor let people sign up to get 12 free ebooks novels from them, in PDF, HTML and unprotected Mobi formats, which is good for the new Amazon Kindle.  I socked them away for a rainy day when I want to try out some new authors, but I especially appreciated getting a copy of Old Man’s War by John Scalzi because I already bought and listened to it on audio.  Audio books are the best way to fully experience a book, in my humble opinion, but audio books are not so good for reference and study.  eBooks are great for snagging a quote.  I wished all paper editions came with ebook editions for reviewing purposes – but I digress from my main topic.

I don’t know why there is so much free reading and listening on the Internet.  I do know there’s a theory that a certain amount of free promotion helps with sales, but currently there’s enough free promotion to exist completely without buying.

Some writers like Cory Doctorow even offer their latest novels for free, such as his new book Little Brother.  Read the intro in the HTML edition to see just how far his generosity extends.  I’m waiting for the audio edition to show up on Audible.com to buy.  I’ve read Cory’s stories in anthologies I’ve bought, but his name has stuck with me because of his free work on the Internet.  Finding his brilliant “Anda’s Game” made me remember his name as a standout writer.  The same thing happened with Charlie Stross, because of free stories on the net, or stories in anthologies, I’ve gone on to buy his books.

A good way to dip your toe in the free story waters is to read BestScienceFictionStories.com where Rusty reviews standout SF short stories, many of which are on the net to read for free and Rusty provides the links.  He even offers a guide to finding free stories, “Nine Secrets For Finding Your Favorite Science Fiction Short Stories Online,” as well as “The 10 Best Web Sites for Free Online Science Fiction Short Stories.”  When I was a kid I had to haunt musty used bookshops all over Miami to find classic SF stories to read.  Now story hunting is as easy as a mouse-click away.

And these stories aren’t submissions from would-be writers, or trunk stories from published writers, but award winning stories, stories that have appeared in best-of-the-year anthologies, and stories that have appeared on lists like The Top 100 Sci-Fi Short Stories.

For the last decade I’ve been doing far more listening to fiction than reading.  At first audio science fiction was rare, but in the last year there has been a boom in SF&F for your ears, including free productions.  At first free audio featured amateur readers no better than the best student you’d hear when we had to take turns reading aloud in class.  The best professional readers today act out audio books in performances I often find better than those I see in Oscar winning movies.  Free audio productions have a long way to go to compete with professional productions, but surprisingly, they are evolving fast!

The granddaddy of SF audio is probably Escape Pod, currently broadcasting it’s 159th episode.  You no longer have to mess with podcast software to listen to the shows, so go sample its stories with the on-page sound controls.  The production quality is now equal or better to many of the commercial stories I buy at Audible.com.  Escape Pod offers a lot of quality for free.  Again, these aren’t just third-tier stories, but stories that have appeared in professional story magazines like F&SF, Asimov’s, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Jim Baen’s Universe, and other magazines that SF writers love to sell to.

Also, the above linked magazine sites often offer free stories to read from their for-sale magazines, especially during award times when they want to promote their nominated authors.  Just following the links on this page will keep you up-to-date with what’s going in with the genre of science fiction.  You’ll learn who the famous authors are as well as the new and upcoming writers.

Free audio book novels are showing up but most of them are read by amateur readers, something not to my taste, but if you like free and are patient and forgiving, you might find a lot in these offerings.  I expect this category to grow in the future as amateur actors discover audio books are a way to audition their talents and get their names known.  Digital recording equipment is relatively cheap, but producing a ten-twenty hour novel is quite a commitment, but they are appearing.  Keep an eye on SFF Audio.

And if you want to know about classic science fiction, visit Feedbooks, where you can get ebook novels for free.  Their Science Fiction page offer books from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to George Orwell’s 1984 to Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, the new book mentioned above.  And all the books are nicely formatted for a wide range of electronic reading devices.  Teachers and professors could offer a class on science fiction and their students could get all their textbooks for free on this site.

I don’t understand how all this generosity works.  It’s a hippie dream – a commie’s philosophy come true.  Feedbooks doesn’t even have ads on their page.  It’s a mystery, like WordPress, how do they make their money?  There are even radio magazine shows like StarShipSofa.com, that appear to be the work of energetic individuals unmotivated by capitalism.  It’s like the old days of fanzines, creating a new generation of online fandom, fashioning an audio genzine.

Like I said, it doesn’t take much to join this community, just add the RSS feeds from SF Signal and SFF Audio.  Having online access allows web surfers to join a never ending science fiction convention, again for free, without having to buy a membership or pay for hotels, cabs and airline tickets.  If you follow SFF Audio, links to panels and con speeches often show up too.  And again, it’s all for free.

This makes me wonder about the financial health of the little audio book publishers and small press publishers.  Is all this free competition hurting them?  SF Signal and SFF Audio also link to these commercial sites, so if you want to see them succeed, patronize their online stores too.  The commercial SF&F magazines have been losing paid readership for years – is the Internet partially at fault – either through free offerings, or just a diversion from old fashion pastimes?  It’s all too hard to know, but we do know there were a lot more short story magazines on sale at newsstands before the advent of television, again a system that offered content for free, usually paid for by ads.

The science fiction short story may go the way of poetry – moving out of the realm of commercial sales to exist and be supported by love of the art form and its fans.  I hate to see that, but I sure do love the fact that the art form of the science fiction short story seems to be growing on the Internet.

Learning to adapt to this free medium takes a bit of training and equipment.  Listening to audio via on-page controls is the easiest way to join in.  Just play a story and kick back.  They are nice company for doing the dishes, or pursuing hobbies like modeling or knitting.  Next up is learning to subscribe to podcasts in iTunes and take the stories with you when you run or walk.  If you like to read on your phone, PDA, notebook computer or ebook reader, find you favorite reading software and learn where the best places that offer that format for free.  I’ve barely touched on the free sites available. 

Like I said, I mostly listening to books because I’ve found so many ways to integrate audio books into my routine.  It’s quite wonderful to be walking down the street while classic novels are whispered into my ear.

Jim

Young @ Heart – Don’t Wait for the DVD

There are some films that you need to see in theaters, and Young @ Heart is one of them.  I’m not the kind of guy who cries, but if I wore mascara my face would have been a mess during this great feel good movie.  I’m curious if this show has any impact on those are are currently young of body, but I think any middle-aged person will find this story of the oldest rock-and-roll cover band to be uplifting and inspire great reflection about dealing with getting old themselves.

This is a little story about a chorus of old people who don’t give up no matter what, even when two of their own die in one week, and their little revue gets an emotional jet assisted take-off by being seen on the big screen in the dark theater.  I never admired wrinkly-old-people more, because this tribe of oldsters rocked out and kicked my ass when it comes to living and gumption.  At Rotten Tomatoes its rated 87%, and I’ve got to figure that other 13% of reviewers are Dead @ Heart.

Sure these old farts would get the boot from Simon and the American Idol tribunal, but songs like Coldplay’s “Fix You” was totally owned by a really fat old guy with an oxygen breather in tow.  On the big screen, the lyrics of these songs were totally showcased in a way that made them sound far more meaningful than when sung as anthems to the young.  “Road to Nowhere” by the The Talking Heads and “I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones took on whole new meanings.

I’m listening to Coldplay sing “Fix You” right now and it just doesn’t have the impact it did in the movie.  But I now admire the lyrics all the more.  I’m reminded of another movie about music I saw a few weeks ago, Once, and how the songs just don’t translate with the same impact off the screen without being able to see the tortured faces who were singing words that matched their expressions.

I can imagine some viewers thinking that all of this is camp, or stupid oldster tricks, but I found the ancient ones hard core for getting up and doing things I’ve been too scared to do all my life.  Janis and I sat up close and I think seeing these little people on the big screen magnified the issues of standing every day with Mr. Death in the room.

I think Young @ Heart had major impact with me because I’ve been around a lot of dying people in recent years, and I can read much more into the scenes than the film maker really worked to show.  The more you know about pain, suffering, deteriorating bodies and death, the more real this movie becomes.  Unless you have some inkling of what it takes to make such an effort late in life, then you’ll not truly get this film.  It might be fun and a lot of laughs but you’ll miss the Sigmund Freud lessons.

It’s one thing to rock in your teens, that’s fucking easy man, it’s a whole other thing to rock out when you’re in your eighties and nineties.  I think I’ll go play Mr. Young’s “Hey, Hey, My My (Into the Black).”  I’ve got to keep remembering those lessons.

[Here are a handful of YouTube clips to give you an idea, but they don’t work like being at the theater.]

Jim

Rethinking the Kindle

Tonight I was reading on my Kindle and I decided I’m not completely happy with it.  I love reading on the Kindle, that is, seeing the large print, reading screen by screen with a press of a button, and having a narrow line width to scan with my eyes.  What I don’t like about the Kindle is the Home directory.  I also discovered I no longer like reading Time magazine on the Kindle, although this might not be completely the fault of the Kindle.

For my personal use and taste, I’ve decided I like the Kindle best for reading a single book at a time.  The Kindle is great for reading on a book you’re hooked on and you’re ready to sit and do some serious reading.  I can read screen after screen with little eyestrain.  The Kindle is a comfortable magnifying glass.  Whenever I used to try to reading normal books and hold a magnifier it was never comfortable.  For me the Kindle has become a tool to make reading easier on the eyes.

I don’t like managing books on the Kindle.  The computer makes for a much better librarian.  I wished the Home page only had unread books on it, and I could hide all my read books in another directory.  Really all I want is to turn on my Kindle and start reading where I left off, so I’m not even sure I wouldn’t be happy leaving my library of books on my computer or on Amazon.

The whole thing about carrying 2,000 books around in one little device isn’t as interesting in practice as it was in theory.  In other words, I like the Kindle as a book replacement, but not as a library replacement.  The Kindle’s software and hardware interfaces are clunky when it involves more than reading.  PREV PAGE and NEXT PAGE are perfect concepts for reading – all those other buttons, not so much.

I could handle a much simpler Kindle, but I don’t know if my tastes would make other Kindle users happy.  Amazon should sell two kinds of Kindles – a streamline reader with few buttons, no broadband connection, and have it managed from a computer, for about $100, and then the more expensive Kindle with all the bells and whistles for $399.  I would be happy with three buttons: an On/Off switch, and a Next and Previous page buttons, along with a USB port.  Yeah, and it would need some kind of home button with a trackpad or other cursor selector device – but ultimately I’d prefer a touch screen.  I wondering if something like the iPod player control would work with ebook navigation. 

I’d like this simple Kindle to be super hardened so I wouldn’t be afraid of taking it places, include the bathtub or beach.

My 4gb iPod Nano can hold many unabridged audio books but if I put more than a few on it then it becomes a pain to find things.  My iPod and Kindle just need room for 1-3 books – at least that’s how I feel.  I’m trying to simplify my life.  My iPod Nano is the perfect tool for listening to audio books.  The Kindle is still too swiss-army knifey to make me happy.

I love that the Kindle is Green and I can go paperless, but I’ve decided that general magazines aren’t suited for it.  My fiction magazines are okay, but modern magazines have too much content, with lots of little sidebars and snippets of facts mixed in with the articles.  That busy layout doesn’t translate well to a pure reading layout of the Kindle.

Jim

Ethan Frome

For my May monthly selection for the 1 Percent Well-Read Challenge I decided to read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.  This is my first reading experience with Wharton, and I was very impressed.  Ethan Frome was first published in 1911, but is set earlier, in a time before cars, when people lived very differently from how they do now.  I listened to an unabridged edition of this book from Recorded Books read by George Guidall, and as soon as I started listening I knew I was hearing very fine writing.

The reason I joined the 1 Percent Well-Read Challenge was to seek out books I’d normally never read, and to discover views of life that would be surprising and novel, and I think Wharton succeeded well with those goals.  Ethan Frome is a very short novel that is often assigned to school kids to read, and I can understand why.  The writing is vivid, sharp and full of details that should stimulate a lot of discussion with young modern minds.  At one point Ethan talks about stars and constellations and regrets he wasn’t able to escape from small town life to become educated and pursue scientific ambitions.  We seldom hear 19th century characters talk about science.

Ambition versus reality is a common thread throughout the story, and I can’t help but think any reader of this novel not comparing their own life with Ethan and Mattie.  We all want more than we’re given, and Wharton creates a rather horrific analogy of being trapped by circumstances beyond our control.  The heavy ironic ending would fit naturally into a Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents television show.

Classic novels of the past are a vehicle of time travel for me, especially ones like Ethan Frome that are written with a significant accumulation of details.  I started listening to Ethan Frome just after listening to The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein, a science fiction novel.  I was surprised by the stark contrast of details and lack of details.  Heinlein provided damn few details about his vision of the future, instead telling his story mostly in dialog.  Wharton told her story in a chronicle of observations, descriptions of moods and voice, and sparse dialog.  It would be fantastic if science fiction writers could make-up such realistic details about the future for their stories.

The Heinlein book was overtly about sexual relationships, but it was unrealistic.  The Wharton book dealt with sexual undercurrents at a time when writers couldn’t write directly about sex.  It was far more realistic.

Jim

* I was disturb by the number of out of print editions of Ethan Frome on the web that seemed to be no more than traps to get people to look at ads.  In the old Internet days there were a few sites for free books that would nicely format the texts for reading online.  These ad honeypots did not do that.  A lot of these sites were geared to school kids, knowing they had to research the book.  Some of these sites offered study guides, which is admirable, although the content on many were thin.  I’m hoping over time some of these study guide sites will emerge as true centers of study, and not just for school kids.  I think all of these book sites should try to format the text to make online reading easy, and offer links to common ebook formats for people who want to read on ebooks, PDAs, phones and laptops.  It would also be nice if they could integrate their ads into a layout that is more appealing to the eyes.  Fewer ads should get more attention, and if placed properly they shouldn’t detract from the content.  Most of the time the layout was so bad I immediately closed my browser tab.

Confessions of a Television Addict

I have been a television addict for over a half-century and seen more fantastic visions than Thomas de Quincey ever did as an opium addict.  I’ve always planned my schedule around TV viewing and although I think of myself as a bookworm, I spend far more hours watching rather than reading and probably should consider myself a tubeworm.

On a number of occasions throughout my life I’ve tried to go cold-turkey from the glass teat, as Harlan Ellison used to refer to television.  I’ve never succeeded for long.  My wife and I have two DVRs, each capable of recording two shows at once, and there are times when I want more.  We have a 56″ high definition television that we stare at for hours and hours each week, and our cable bill is $120 a month.  (This doesn’t count the $80 my wife spends at her M-F apartment out of town with a third DVR.)  Every evening after work I look at TV Guide’s excellent online grid schedule to plan my evening’s fix – juggling the hours to watch and record.

Since I can’t watch as fast as I can find good shows I want to watch my DVR is always near full and I’m constantly forced to offload shows to my DVD recorder.  Mostly I prefer documentaries, but I do love movies on TCM, and a some regular TV shows like Lost, ER, Gray’s Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, Survivor, Masterpiece, and a few others.

Unfortunately, this means all my best free time is taken up in front of the boob tube, although I prefer to think of it as my sixth sense that watches out over the world and universe.  My high definition channels PBS, Discover, National Geographic, History, keep me well educated about what’s going on beyond what I can see for myself.  Sure there are plenty of nights when there is nothing on, but I don’t ever complain that television is a vast wasteland.  It’s a cultural fire hose.

Even though I value television immensely, I often feel I should cut back on my watching, or even give it up entirely for stretches at a time.  There is more to life than vicarious living through video.  I tell myself I need a balance.  More and more I find it grating that my cable bill is $120 a month.  On one hand I couldn’t get anywhere near that much entertainment value for my buck elsewhere, but on the other hand it seems extravagant.  Now that I’m thinking about retirement and living cheaply, it seems like a big expense.

I’d also like to live a more varied lifestyle, put more of my off-work hours into other hobbies and exercise, so I’m toying once again with cutting back on my television addiction.  And I’ve thought of a simple solution to try.  First I’d give up cable TV completely and buy an antenna for my HDTV.  That would reduce hundreds of channels down to four, and force me to live without DRVs.  Through my Netflix account I can make up for TCM, HBO and other premium channels.  And through the Internet I could supplement my television diet with Hulu.com and other online video sources.  I could maintain my addictive lifestyle and save $1500 a year, but that’s not the ultimate goal.

To tell the truth this solution still leaves me with too much choice.  What I’d really like to do is spend all of my extra time on writing fiction, web development and blogging – activities that are a bit more mentally demanding, but I see this plan as the first steps of weaning myself off my TV addiction.  I don’t want to give up TV, but get my use under control.

To tell the truth, I loved the way television was back in the 1950s and 1960s when there was little choice and most people watched the same shows.  I enjoy Survivor now because it ignites so much conversation between people I know.  Ditto for Lost.  I wouldn’t watch Survivor if it was only me, but I like Lost enough to watch it if I had no one to share with, but I enjoy it best when I get to jabber with other fans.

I’ve been seeing news stories about our lives being too full, and that we try to multitask too much, and that some people get more done by doing less.  I think this current urge to cut back on cable TV coincides with that national trend.  It is fantastic that cable television can offer so many types of shows, but this diversity of choice has negative attributes too.  As we get more choice my wife and I find less to watch together.  As I get more choice I find even more to watch.  What I would really like is the discipline to only watch one show a day – be it an over-the-air TV show, Netflix movie, or a DVD documentary.

I couldn’t pursue this experiment if my wife lived at home during the week – she’s a worse TV addict than I am.  She’s agreed to let me follow my abnormal inclination until she gets to move back home.  I think part of my drive to explore these changes in lifestyle is because I’ve been thinking so much about retirement.  I figure if I’m not going to work then I need to be more active.  TV is okay if you work hard all day and want to come home and relax, but I worry what TV would do to me if I had all day and evening to watch.

This reminds me of a book I once read called Positive Addiction.  It was the author’s belief that to get rid of a negative addiction you needed to substitute it with a positive addiction.  I’m hoping I’ll get addicted to writing and web programming, as well as more exercise and yard work.  Hell, I might even lose my coach potato paunch.

My plan is to turn in my cable boxes next Saturday unless I lose my will.  I’m sure whatever happens will lead to another post.

Jim