Hi all,

Vernor Vinge is one of the most influential SF authors out there, and he's widely credited with seeing the future of online communities in his books 'True Names' and 'A Fire upon the Deep'. Quite apart from that, he's won a whole bunch of Hugo awards.

Anyway, I was pretty astonished to discover that he's put the entire text of his latest novel, Rainbows End, online: http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html

It's a fantastic book, and I wanted to put it on my new Sony Reader. A couple of minutes with PielrfGUI and here's the result - normal formatting, with full TOC. Hope you like it!

Hey, Adrian, I put the attachment on hold, 'til I could ask the question: Has Vernor Vinge given permission to distribute the book? I notice that the page has a copyright notice on it, and it's clearly not public domain, so we need that permission before we can have it posted here. We have to be careful about that sort of thing, unless we want to get shut down. Not a pretty thought.

Unfortunately, his posting it on his site isn't the same as giving permission to distribute it on other sites. :(

If he has some sort of permission posted, please link it and we can go from there. :)

Thanks!

No problem, I understand - I'll email him and get back to you guys.

No problem, I understand - I'll email him and get back to you guys.
That is a very good idea.

No problem, I understand - I'll email him and get back to you guys.Great! We'll look for your post on his response. :yes:

Thanks for understanding! :2thumbsup

Just got an email back - unfortunately he'd rather not have it distributed as an eBook mostly because it would be tricky sorting out the IP rights. Oh well. Still, while looking around, I found another Hugo nominated book that *is* CC-licensed, which will be online here shortly!