
Project Gutenberg's science fiction bookshelf - fogus
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_%28Bookshelf%29
======
Shivetya
Recommendation, EE Smith's Triplanetary. This is the first book the Lensman
series, unfortunately I do not see the rest of the series available through
this means.

While a product of his time these stories are incredible. If you like space
battles he had some very original ideas, some of which even many modern
science fiction writers haven't touched.

~~~
dmccunney
A note on various of the Gutenberg SF entries: the versions on Project
Gutenberg may be the magazine serial versions. They may differ substantially
from the book versions. (Shorter, to fit magazine space limitations.)

Copyright law was different back then, and magazine versions had different
copyrights than book versions. In many cases, magazine copyrights were _not_
renewed, but book copyrights were, so you'll see magazine serial versions on
PG but the books won't be available.

This is particularly true for E. E. Smith's Lensman and Skylark of Space
series: the book publication versions aren't on PG. (I have no idea who
currently holds the rights to the Lensman series.)

It _is_ possible to find them on the darknet, but quality will vary.

------
angersock
Ah, cool, they've got some of E.E. Smith's stuff and Campbell's stuff. Capek's
_R.U.R._ as well. A bunch of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

I also spy some cool short works of Phillip K. Dick ( _Second Variety_ ), some
Cory Doctorow, some Harry Harrison. Very nifty!

~~~
opminion
Beware of the Jules Verne translations, they might be way worse than the
recent ones.

~~~
wazoox
I fail to see why older translations should be any worse. I mean this isn't
great poetry, just very entertaining literature :)

~~~
InclinedPlane
There really is a quality difference. Several of Jules Verne's works were
serialized in news papers at the time and then a slap-dash translation was
made very quickly so they could publish them in other countries. The
translations were often so bad that Verne himself commented on them. In some
cases the translations omitted and abridged parts of the works as well.

It very much does a disservice to Verne's reputation to read such poor quality
translations. Indeed, perhaps the reason why you do not consider Verne's work
to be "great poetry" is because you've never been exposed to any good
translations.

Here is a volume that might be worth acquiring, for example:
[http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Journeys-Journey-Circling-
Leag...](http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Journeys-Journey-Circling-
Leagues/dp/1438432380/)

~~~
Wingman4l7
I only really began to appreciate what work it takes to make a definitive
translation when I read about all the effort that Walter James Miller and
Frederick Paul Walter put in to Verne's _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ \--
it's no mean feat.

------
MrDrone
Some recommendations for people:

Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper, known for his alternative time line stories.

Beyond Lies the Wub, by Philip K Dick, a collection of his early short
stories.

A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The beginning of his Mars series
about its civilization's decline.

~~~
angersock
While I'm quite certain that this has nothing to do with anything, _Beyond
Lies the Wub_ sounds like an awesome album name for a dubstep or EDM
anthology.

~~~
gmbuell
You're not alone. The Verge published a feature titled "Beyond lies the wub: a
history of dubstep"

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3262089/history-of-
dubstep...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3262089/history-of-dubstep-
beyond-lies-the-wub)

------
GFischer
Is there a way to know what other Hacker News readers recommend?

I use Goodreads, but while I've found it pretty good as a source of new books
to read, the ratings system ends up with everything coming within a few points
of 4 (4.1, 3.9, 4.2).

I'm guilty of tagging books I read with either 4 or 5 usually, unless it's
pretty bad.

Anyway, what I wanted to ask was if there was a way to know what a subgroup of
readers thinks of a book.

~~~
DigitalJack
We could make a HackerNews group on goodreads.

Edit: created: <http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/94469-hackernews>

~~~
GFischer
Joined :)

Well, the first book recommended is The Pragmatic Programmer, we can all get
behind that one :)

------
brudgers
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32759/32759-h/32759-h.htm>

_"This is Good."_ \- Conan

~~~
RexRollman
There is a really good selection of REH on the Australian version of PG:

<http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterH>

------
jawns
I love Project Gutenberg.

For those of you who enjoy listening to audio books, there's a project called
Librivox -- <http://librivox.org> \-- that provides volunteer-read audio
versions of public-domain books. (The quality of the volunteers is mixed, and
sometimes every chapter is read by a different person, which can be a little
disorienting, but hey, it's free!)

~~~
tunesmith
Looked into that recently - what is interesting is that they have a rule
against allowing ratings on the productions, because - due to the free effort
aspect - they worry that it will make it discouraging for other producers to
invest their free time in recording new productions.

I can't help thinking this is a less-than-ideal solution. What are some ways
to make it easier for a listener to find a good production, while
simultaneously protecting producers from discouragement?

~~~
saraid216
I haven't heard of Librivox before, and I'm too lazy to actually check the
site, but my thoughts:

Upvote-only, no displayed view/play count. This protects the producers by
letting them assume neutral reasons for low approval ratings–maybe everyone
who _does_ listen to their reading is just too lazy to upvote–while providing
a mechanism to say, "This one was good."

I could also see making the upvotes invisible and using some magical algorithm
to convert raw numbers into a range from "no one has given an opinion" to
"lots of people liked this".

------
dkhenry
What i really want to see is a great Tablet front end for Gutenberg. I haven't
found one yet and haven't gotten around to making one either :-(

~~~
methurston
FBReader has an decent interface for searching, but you need to know what you
are looking for. There's not a good way to browse via the app.

~~~
npsimons
I'll second FBReader; works great on my N900. Though you do have to have your
library organized outside of it, it doesn't browse well.

------
hubb
pleasantly surprised with the selection. a couple kurt vonneguts, a bunch of
philip k dicks, lots of jules verne, as well as h. g. wells.

awesome!

------
kgarten
any recommendations where to start? :)

~~~
fogus
I'm personally starting from the beginning. :-)
[http://blog.fogus.me/2012/09/21/the-amazing-colossal-
science...](http://blog.fogus.me/2012/09/21/the-amazing-colossal-science-
fiction-ketchup/)

~~~
GFischer
Are those available on Project Gutemberg? I saw some classic authors (A.E. Van
Vogt, etc) which should be.

~~~
dmccunney
Nope. Remember that Project Gutenberg hosts books which have lapsed into the
public domain. That's not true for a lot of the stuff mentioned. (A decent
collection of Van Vogt is available through Baen Book's Webscriptions program,
though it lacks classics like Slan.)

You will find the occasional oddity: a couple of Samuel R. Delany's early Ace
Double publications just popped up, and Chip is still very much alive. Chip
has been in the business a long time - if they've lapsed into the public
domain, it's because he allowed them to.

(It _is_ weird when you see stuff appearing on PG by people you know/knew -
Delany among the living, and Terry Carr and Laurence M. Janifer among the
deceased.)

------
Macsenour
H.Beam Piper, amazing writer.

