A double-feature in the slushpile. We rarely get two things worthy of having their own thread on the same day, but today we do.
The Survivors by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Paul Edwin Zimmer is one of those old-school science fiction adventure on a weird planet things, and the sequel to
Hunters of the Red Moon which was free in December and repeated yesterday.
This isn't linked up to the paperback, but IIRC it would have been published sometime between the mid 60s to the late 70s by Ace or DAW books.
Free without DRM (previous works offered by the MZB Literary Works Trust have been DRM-free, so this one likely is) @ Amazon
main UK DE ES FR IT
(ETA: You can pick up some of MZB's
backlist novels quite cheaply without DRM over at Fictionwise using the
60% off coupon this week which should be good for the rest of the day and possibly early tomorrow. They also have some Paul di Filippo
shorts including a Hugo nominee, if you're looking to use up lingering Micropay.)
Description
After surviving the Hunt on the Red Moon, Dane should have been happy to return to civilization, and, for a while, he was. But then he got bored. So when their proto-saurian friend Aratak asked Dane and Rianna to accompany him on a mission to a primitive world, where their fighting skills would be needed for the party's survival, Dane jumped at the chance. He should have remembered the old saying: Be careful what you wish for....
If the MZB book hadn't shown up, I'd be giving main feature status to this Paul Di Filippo (
ISFDB entry,
Wikipedia) work:
A Princess of the Linear Jungle by Paul Di Filippo looks like a literary-type speculative urban fantasy/magical surrealism adventure quest story, originally printed as a chapbook by PS Publishing in 2010.
Free (likely without DRM, since PSP's other freebies generally were) for who knows how long @ Amazon
main UK DE ES FR IT
Description
Life is traditionally arduous, constrained and tedious for the average university graduate student, even in the exotic Linear City: that fathomless construction—natural or artificial,who can tell?—which stretches infinitely in a narrow ribbon of buildings and street, bounded on one side by an enigmatic Heaven beyond a wide River, and on the other by an equally nebulous Hell beyond the Tracks of a common train. So it is no surprise that the smart and ambitious young woman named Merritt Abraham, lacking a steady boyfriend, stuck laboring in the bowels of a dusty museum, frustrated in her profession and short on cash, yearns for some excitement in her studious, mundane life.
But she little reckons what fate has in store for her: a sweaty descent into the dangerous wilderness of the savage Jungle Blocks, where weird natives worship a little-seen barbaric queen!
But first Merritt must satisfy her mentor at the museum, navigate the pitfalls of romance, and narrowly escape a fatal encounter with two collegiate ghouls. Only then will she find her talents appreciated by an Indiana-Jones-style professor named Arturo Scoria. Forced by politics to link up with his rival, Professor Durian Vinnagar, Scoria soon assembles an expedition’s worth of queer characters, including Merritt, and our young female adventurer eagerly leaves behind the humdrum collegiate Borough of Wharton for the walled enclave of rampant, furious greenery that might well be the very Omphalos of the Linear City. There, she will meet a Burroughsian destiny that is simultaneously frightening, glorious and astonishing.
That's basically it for the sf/fantasy backlist content of the slushpile, though there's some horror-ish stuff I'll check against the ISFDB later. Preliminary finds for the non-spammers whom I recognized immediately below. I'm going to get something to eat and work on my lab report before I do any further trawling.
Harlequin-published Patricia Watters offers another historical western romance:
Wicked Temptations
Previously-included Ken McClure offers a political medical thriller whch he says was printed by Collins/Fontana in 1988 under the pen name Ken Begg:
The Trojan Boy
John Matthews returns with a 1999-Penguin psychological detective vs killer thriller:
Past Imperfect
Sharon Ihle returns with another historical romance:
Spellbound
Dave Zeltserman returns with a 2007-Five Star psychological crime thriller:
Bad Thoughts
Warren Murphy returns with a 1990-Pinnacle political terrorism adventure thriller:
Scorpion's Dance
Ellora's Cave-published Jade Buchanan returns with another in the multi-author collaborative western romance setting, this one involving an f/m/m menage:
Hard Candy (Bandit Creek)
Julie Smith is an Edgar-winning mystery writer with a long line of Fawcett paperbacks to her credit. She offers advice for aspiring authors with:
Writing Your Way
Minor-ISFDB-ed Lee Moan is back with a collection of supernatural/horror stories:
The Midnight Men and Other Stories
Elementary school teacher Brad Miller returns with another educational volume of:
Weird Science for Kids: Gravity, Magnetism, Electricity, and More! I had a look inside the previous one and it seemed pretty decent, with explanations of why stuff worked as well as How To.
Enjoy, especially if you read the previously freebied Hunters and were wondering What Happened Next.