The Worlds Best Science Fiction Ebooks

By Claudine MacDonald


The best science fiction ebooks can now be enjoyed in greater quantity than ever before. By spending practically no time at all, you can find loads of websites where you can download a gigantic wealth of material for a few pennies or even no cost at all. You can drive yourself crazy just inspecting the many different sci-fi genres and titles that are now very easily available.

The first publishing house to fully embrace the concept of providing free ebooks was Project Gutenberg. This organization now offers more than 40,000 titles in a number of popular digital formats free of charge. Gutenberg defines science fiction (aka SF, Sci-Fi) as a work of fiction wherein something about it is significantly different from our own past or present reality. This difference can be philosophical, metaphysical, technological, physical or historical. One paradigm that is excluded from this genre is magic, which is considered under the Fantasy genre.

Even the major brand name suppliers are being very generous with their titles. One name that has become internationally synonymous with ebooks markets a series of what they call sci-fi megapacks. Each megapack contains 25 different science fiction titles. These may be downloaded off their website for less than a dollar. Among the authors whose work is contained in these collections are Nelson S. Bond, Cyril M. Kornbluth and Arthur J. Burks.

Arthur J. Burks was a colonel in the U. S. Marines and a very prolific author. He made writing his full-time career when he retired from the military in 1928 and rapidly found himself on the "million-words-a-year" list. Among his works are "Blood of the Dragon" and "Two Tales from the Pulps."

Cyril Kornbluth was born without a middle name so he chose to use the middle initial of his wife's name, which was Mary. As a member of the Futurians, he formed part of the critical mass of authors and editors who drove the sci-fi genre forward during the years between 1937 and 1945. He used several different pen names, including Scott Mariner, Simon Eisner and Kenneth Falconer. Among his works are "Eight Worlds of C. M. Kornbluth" and "The Space Merchants."

Nelson Slade Bond introduced the first-ever strong female character to a science fiction story. She appeared in his "Meg the Priestess" stories. Regrettably, his classic, "Mr Mergenthwirker's Lobblies, " is not available in ebook. Bond wrote extensively for books, radio, television and the stage. One of his tales, "Lancelot Biggs Cooks a Pirate, " is included in one of the megapack anthologies.

Readers who like to lose themselves in tales of lost worlds, planetory romance, soft sci-fi and "swords and planets" will be happy to know they can marshall a sizable collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories. In addition to the Tarzan series with which his name became inextricably linked, he penned the Barsoom tales, a series of novels set around a fictional situation on the planet Mars. The first of these tales, "A Princess of Mars, " was published in 1917.

Expert shoppers will spot an occasional story by a more modern science fiction writer in one of the megapacks. "The Big Trip Up Yonder, " by Kurt Vonnegut, is one example. The best science fiction ebooks ever written by other well-known writers like Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury are also easy to find. In no time at all, you can download a collection that will keep you entertained on a voyage to Mars and back.




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