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[rez]

any of you guys ever read Tim Trumans 'Scout' series from, what was it...back in the late 80s?
Years back a buddy gave me the whole collection and said something to the effect of 'Take these and read 'em'. Ended up glad he did as it was found an enjoyable read.
Always was one to like those futuristic 'After it all hits the fan' stories and films.


be a child enthralled in those old b&w movies

[John C]

You need to spend some time over yon, then:

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Science_Fiction_(Bookshelf)

They're not al winners, and they're not all post-apocalyptic, but there are a few gems scattered around, mostly identifiable by name.

[narfstar]

Two of my favorite sci fi writers are available on gutenburg. Alan E Nourse and Kurt Vonegut. They are nothing alike. I discovered Nourse in our schools Juvenile Fiction section when I was in jr high. Juvenile means no sex and no bad language not immature stories. IMHO how every writer should write. If someone wants to buy a porn book let em buy a porn book. I see NO reason for explicit sex or any foul language in an otherwise good story.

[OtherEric]

Most of H. Beam Piper's work is available on Gutenburg.  One of my all time favorites.

[John C]

Piper, absolutely.  Will Jenkins (published as Murray Leinster, among others) also has a lot of great material and probably most strongly resembles a comic book writer of those I've seen there.

Less consistent (and prolific), I also read some Henry Slesar and Walt Shelton last night, and was fairly impressed.

Heh.  But then you have the assortment of stories where it's just about a guy doing some mundane thing, but it's set...IN THE FUTURE!  There's also a lot of "first landing on a planet goes badly" and "invasion that nobody notices" kind of stories.  Those are unfortunate...

[OtherEric]

Heh.  But then you have the assortment of stories where it's just about a guy doing some mundane thing, but it's set...IN THE FUTURE!  There's also a lot of "first landing on a planet goes badly" and "invasion that nobody notices" kind of stories.  Those are unfortunate...

Sturgeon's Law applies to what goes PD, just like everything else.

[John C]

Sturgeon's Law applies to what goes PD, just like everything else.

True.  And I wasn't so much bemoaning the lack of quality control (not at Project Gutenberg, at least...) as I was warning to watch out for the critters, since I haven't found a single sample of them that I'd call good.

Oh, but of course, we'd also be highly remiss if a certain CC Beck didn't get mention, especially since "Vanishing Point," as I recall, was quite good.

[OtherEric]

Has "Vanishing Point" ever been reprinted?  I've got the original, mind you...

I remember how amazed I was when I found out how cheap most pulps are compared to comics, the digests in particular.  I've got the originals of several John Carter of Mars Stories, a few Heinleins, several Foundation stories, "Children of the Lens", Farmer's "The Lovers", "What Mad Universe", all but 3 or 4 or Piper's stories...

And other than two of my four Shadow pulps, I've never paid over 20 dollars for a pulp.  Other than the Shadow, I've never paid over 10 for a digest pulp.  There is some great value if you can find them.

[John C]

I was about to say that I had no idea about the reprints, since I usually only look for them when I want to read a particular story and can't otherwise find it (which isn't the case here), but then I remembered that this has been around forever:

http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/0start.htm#TOC

Looking at the Becks, it doesn't look like any of CC's are otherwise available.  (The Binder brothers, signing their name "Eando," were more prolific, and also quite entertaining...but they're not on Gutenberg.)

And yes, original prices are great, except for a handful.  I've spent more because I needed the book for a project at that time, but that was only a couple of books.  The rest were far cheaper even when I looked for them specifically, and I also have a few that came in a lot, almost nothing apiece.