Comments on: Help me find a good ebook in a forest of mediocrity!

Question: Help me find a good ebook in a forest of mediocrity!

blahblahblah — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:36:56 -0800

I love to read ebooks (especially science fiction or fantasy) but I need some help finding good ones. The existing ebook sites like Fictionwise are terribly organized, and tend to have more obscure titles, rather than standard favorites. So, hive-mind, any good ebook sites you would suggest? Any good ebook finds in the science fiction and fantasy genre you would recommend?

A few more details: Authors who have works in ebook format that I have read and enjoyed: Dan Simmons (Ilium), Peter Hamilton (Night's Dawn, etc.), Naomi Novik (His Majesty's Dragon), Charlie Stross (Glass House), and Dave Duncan (Handful of Men). I am flexible on format, but since I read on my phone, PDF and Sony format are out, but Mobipocket, Palm Reader, and Microsoft Reader are all fine.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:49:30 -0800

Manybooks is the king - it's basically a front-end for Project Gutenberg, and it formats any text there on-the-fly into your desired format.

By: ok

ok — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:54:56 -0800

Definitely check out "The Gutenburg Project", it's an amazing source of GREAT Literature - free.

Also has audio books, also free.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:56:54 -0800

Sorry, should have made it clearer. I am looking for recent science fiction and fantasy, not Guttenberg-style classics.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:57:31 -0800

infinity plus

By: stungeye

stungeye — Thu, 10 May 2007 08:06:10 -0800

Cory Doctorow (of boingboing fame) offers free ebook versions of his (sci-fi) stories on craphound.

By: Comrade_robot

Comrade_robot — Thu, 10 May 2007 08:19:11 -0800

Baen sells its books through webscription (www.webscription.net). If you like MilSciFi, this is a good place to go. Its books are cheap and unencrypted.

By: Jakey

Jakey — Thu, 10 May 2007 08:22:38 -0800

Baen Books have a number of their SF titles freely available at the Baen Free Library

By: adamwolf

adamwolf — Thu, 10 May 2007 08:23:57 -0800

Try John Ringo's stuff on Baen Free Library. Have you read Accelerando by Stross? IIRC that's free as well.

By: flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet — Thu, 10 May 2007 08:34:01 -0800

Unfortunately, I don't have an archive to offer you, but I can tell you that Peter Watts has just about every book he's published recently available for download. And he rocks.

By: Zetetics

Zetetics — Thu, 10 May 2007 08:39:10 -0800

This blog post has lots of suggestions. A search for ebook on boinboing.net will bring up more.

I quite liked Peter Watts' Blindsight.

I generally find its much easier to get popular ebooks through torrents or peer-to-peer than from commercial sites.

By: -harlequin-

-harlequin- — Thu, 10 May 2007 09:13:52 -0800

I'm currently hitting the Jules Verne, of which the The Gutenburg Project has lots.

By: mbrubeck

mbrubeck — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:14:02 -0800

After the vice president of SFWA said that free ebooks were "converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch," a bunch of science fiction writers celebrated International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Day by giving away free ebooks.

Here's a list of Technopeasant Day creations you can download.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:39:27 -0800

HorrorMasters
eFanzines
InfinityPlus
Gateway

By: fings

fings — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:04:41 -0800

Science Fiction (Bookshelf) at Project Gutenberg
'SF' at Project Gutenberg of Australia

By: libraryhead

libraryhead — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:30:06 -0800

Mobipocket is now owned by Amazon, and their retail site is fairly professional and well organized. There's also what used to be the Palm Digital Media site at eReader.com.

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:56:32 -0800

Anyone have any suggestions of particularly good books at InfinityPlus?

By: anaelith

anaelith — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:20:12 -0800

I just want to point out that some newer (modern enough) books are out of copyright and therefore on Project Gutenberg due to not having had the copyright renewed. You won't find a lot that way, but if you dig through the bookshelf previously linked you can find some Andre Norton as well as almost all of H. Beam Piper's stuff. So you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand.