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Originally Posted by FlorenceArt
On a whim I bought The Tomorrow People by Judith Merril at FictionWise. From the excerpt on the site, it looks well written.
I like that FW is publishing many old science-fiction books in multiformat, though I feel uneasy that those are probably out of copyright in the US and the author won't get a cent from those sales. On the other hand, I wish there were more books from the recent past (after WWII) available in e-format, and not just sci-fi...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
Almost nothing since the mid-1920s is out of copyright in the US. The exceptions (for SF, at least) mostly arise from the failure of various magazine publishers to renew the copyright on the contents of their magazines. So we find the magazine version of lots of 40s-60s SF up at Project Gutenberg (for example).
If you're worried about whether the author is getting money, check for the book over at PG. If it's at PG, save your money and download for free. If it's NOT at PG, then there's almost certainly a rights-holder somewhere who is getting a royalty payment from your purchase. And that rights-holder is most likely the author.
Xenophon
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Thank you Xenophon. I still had some doubts after reading your post (especially since most or all of these old books republished by Fictionwise seem to be either SF or fantasy) so I checked the copyright notice in the book, and it is copyrighted to the author, so I suppose that means she gets something out of this if she is alive.
By the way, my guess was a bit off, it's not that well written, but it's a good story and I'm enjoying it so far. It's also amusing to see the "future" (1976) seen from 1960. You can fly from Mexico City to New York (who are in the same country in 1976) by rocket in 1.5 hour, but you still have to go through an operator to make a phone call
It's also interesting to see a female take on a usually all-male subject, at least at the time this was written (space exploration).