FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

Google charges me tax on non-agency publishers only.

My books were the opposite. The Harper Collins book was the one that was taxed.

[crich70]

As of Sept. 9th Wesley Allison has a new Robot Wife book out at Smashwords for $2.99. I gather it's the first part of a trilogy.
Smashwords
His Robot Wife: A Great Deal of Patience

Mike Smith and his robot wife Patience have overcome a great many obstacles in their life together. No obstacle is quite as great as a world war. As the United States, China, Europe and India mobilize against the shadowy Anarchists, who have carved vast swaths across Africa, the Middle East, and Russia, Mike and Patience deal with the fallout at home, and the public’s changing perceptions of robots. Meanwhile, Mike’s son Lucas finds himself in the heart of the conflict as he takes command of robot soldiers leading America’s war effort. A Great Deal of Patience is the first book of a new trilogy that ties together the previous books: His Robot Girlfriend, His Robot Wife, His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue, and His Robot Girlfriend: Charity.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the DRM-free thread for a new Humble Bundle:

Humble RPG Book Bundle War Machine, Hordes, & Iron Kingdoms contains a selection of gamebooks and tie-in fiction from the popular fantasy steampunk setting out from Privateer Press. The accompanying novels and short story anthologies are available throughout all the tiers, and some of them are written by decently-established sfnal genre authors whose other works you may have previously enjoyed.

Also, if you're interested in more gaming tie-in fiction, Bundle of Holding's offerings for the Shadows of Esteren medieval gothic horror setting which translates a French game, includes in one of the bundles a collection of prose short stories. They've also music soundtracks and an in-universe recipe booklet with dishes created by a real French chef.

[GeoffR]

An omnibus of The Merlin Codex trilogy by Robert Holdstock is $4.99 / $5,99 at Australian / New Zealand retailers, less than the price of book one.

I haven't read this series yet, but he is an interesting writer and his Mythago Wood is one of my all-time favourite fantasy books.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

X-link to the DRM-free thread for a new Humble Bundle:

Humble RPG Book Bundle War Machine, Hordes, & Iron Kingdoms contains a selection of gamebooks and tie-in fiction from the popular fantasy steampunk setting out from Privateer Press. The accompanying novels and short story anthologies are available throughout all the tiers, and some of them are written by decently-established sfnal genre authors whose other works you may have previously enjoyed.

Also, if you're interested in more gaming tie-in fiction, Bundle of Holding's offerings for the Shadows of Esteren medieval gothic horror setting which translates a French game, includes in one of the bundles a collection of prose short stories. They've also music soundtracks and an in-universe recipe booklet with dishes created by a real French chef.

Not bad. For just $15 or more you can get 47 books. Sounds like a real bargain.

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $1.99 from HarperCollins in Canada & the US (price should be the same at all the regular retailers):

The Last Witchfinder by Nebula & World Fantasy award-winner James Morrow (ISFDB, Wikipedia, SFE), whose Shambling Towards Hiroshima I quite liked when it showed up in the Hugo Voter Packet some years ago. This seems to be more a literary fiction-ish historical journey of self-discovery adventure with mild speculative/fantasy elements, but it placed within the top 5 on the annual Locus and Campbell Memorial Award lists (and also got a preliminary nod for the Tiptree, for Gentle Readers interested in potentially Gender-Bending SF which was the category it was nommed under), according to ISFDB. Apparently this was originally published in French translation, but then found an English distributor.

ETA: Wikipedia claims the story is narrated by a sentient copy of Isaac Newton's book Principia Mathematica. I was going to buy this anyway, but now sheer morbid curiosity is bumping it up the TBR.

Jennet Stearne's father hangs witches for a living in Restoration England. But when she witnesses the unjust and horrifying execution of her beloved aunt Isobel, the precocious child decides to make it her life's mission to bring down the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. Armed with little save the power of reason, and determined to see justice prevail, Jennet hurls herself into a series of picaresque adventures—traveling from King William's Britain to the fledgling American Colonies to an uncharted island in the Caribbean, braving West Indies pirates, Algonquin Indian captors, the machinations of the Salem Witch Court, and the sensuous love of a young Ben Franklin. For Jennet cannot and must not rest until she has put the last witchfinder out of business.

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $1.99 from Titan Books in Canada & the US (couponable/VIP discount-eligible @ Kobo, prices should otherwise be the same at all the usual retailers)

The Night Mayor by Stoker & BFSA winning British author Kim Newman (ISFDB, Wikipedia), his very first published novel from 1989, which appears to be an sfnal murder mystery thriller set in a virtual reality world.

Welcome to the City made from a dream. But this isn’t any dream; it is the dark and haunting nightmare of a killer.

It is the near future and old-fashioned movies, or “flatties”, have been replaced by Dreams, virtual reality scenarios written by professional Dreamers. When infamous criminal Truro Daine escapes imprisonment, he flees into the City, an artificial world of his own creation, where he rules as the all-powerful Night Mayor.

Now, detective Dreamer Tom Tunney and Susan Bishopric, author of romance Dreams, must join forces to track him down. But how do you hunt the Night Mayor in a city populated by a dense crowd of strangely familiar characters, where it’s always two-thirty in the morning, shots never kill and the creator is omnipresent in every drop of falling rain…?

Some other $1.99 sfnal Newman bargains have also been pointed out by ZodWallop at the top of page 9 in the Horror & Supernatural megathread. I quite liked Anno Dracula when I read it years ago, though I haven't gotten around to trying the short story collection yet, which I picked up the last time it went on sale.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the Children's/YA megathread for some YA fantasy bargains:

@ $1.99 each from Random House in Canada & the US, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and assorted series titles from Tamora Pierce's Tortall setting.

Also, @ $2.99 from Random House's Spectra imprint, Isaac Asimov's classic Caves of Steel, 2nd in his Robot series set in the far future, teaming up human detective Elijah Baley and robot detective R. Daneel Olivaw to solve a murder mystery.

Also, if you happen to read French, Kobo Canada (and presumably elsewhere since this seems to be a publisher discount from Le Livre de Poche imprint, is having a sale on Le meilleur de la SF, probably just until the end of the month.

Most of it is translated works from authors like Ursula K. Le Guin, Brandon Sanderson, Cherie Priest, Robert Silverberg, Robert Charles Wilson, etc. But there's also a scattering of French native works if you want to give francophone SF/F a try, including award-winning novels from Joël Houssin (Prix Apollo), L. L. Kloetzer (Grand prix de l'imaginaire), and other prominent authors like Serge Brussolo (also a GPDLI recipient, IIRC), among others, priced from $3.99 to $8.99 (mostly $4.99 and $7.99), which is in the cheaper range for francophone books.

[ReadingManiac]

The Wake of the Dragon by Jaq D. Hawkins (Steampunk, airship pirate adventure) is .99 today
https://www.amazon.com/Wake-Dragon-S.../dp/B0080UVQIW

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Bargain @ $1.99 from Titan Books in Canada & the US (couponable/VIP discount-eligible @ Kobo, prices should otherwise be the same at all the usual retailers)

The Night Mayor by Stoker & BFSA winning British author Kim Newman (ISFDB, Wikipedia), his very first published novel from 1989, which appears to be an sfnal murder mystery thriller set in a virtual reality world.

Welcome to the City made from a dream. But this isn’t any dream; it is the dark and haunting nightmare of a killer.

It is the near future and old-fashioned movies, or “flatties”, have been replaced by Dreams, virtual reality scenarios written by professional Dreamers. When infamous criminal Truro Daine escapes imprisonment, he flees into the City, an artificial world of his own creation, where he rules as the all-powerful Night Mayor.

Now, detective Dreamer Tom Tunney and Susan Bishopric, author of romance Dreams, must join forces to track him down. But how do you hunt the Night Mayor in a city populated by a dense crowd of strangely familiar characters, where it’s always two-thirty in the morning, shots never kill and the creator is omnipresent in every drop of falling rain…?

Some other $1.99 sfnal Newman bargains have also been pointed out by ZodWallop at the top of page 9 in the Horror & Supernatural megathread. I quite liked Anno Dracula when I read it years ago, though I haven't gotten around to trying the short story collection yet, which I picked up the last time it went on sale.

Thanks for that. The Night Mayor (<--Amazon link) actually sounds more interesting to me than his Anno Dracula books.

[pdurrant]

Amazon UK: John Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire is just £1.19 in the November monthly sale.

November's sale also has six Kurt Vonnegut books at £0.99 each.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the DRM-free thread for a new Humble Bundle:

Humble Book Bundle Multi-Genre Fiction presented by Night Shade Books contains an assortment of mainly sfnal titles, with a mix of novels and anthologies, with contributors including editors Ellen Datlow, John Joseph Adams, Paula Guran, and Neil Clarke with themed and best-ofs, and authors Martha Wells, Glen Cook, and Will McIntosh, among others.

[ZodWallop]

Not sure if this is literature or sci-fi, so I'll post in both, if that's kosher.

The Handmaid's Tale is $2.99 at Amazon, today only.

It's sci-fi to me. But any sci-fi that gains respect seems to no longer be sci-fi...

[maddz]

Todays Big Deal on Amazon.co.uk has over 30 SF & Fantasy books:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_pg...09689168&ajr=2

It includes:

Philip K Dick: Electric Dreams
Brandon Sanderson: The Final Empire
Charlaine Harris: Midnight Crossroad
Joe Abercrombie: The Blade Itself
Alistair Reynolds: Aurora Rising and Revelation Space
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon
Ursula K LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend
Stephen Donaldson: Lord Foul's Bane and The Runes of the Earth
Robert Holdstock: Mythago Wood
Joanne M Harris: The Gospel of Loki and Runemarks
Bradley Beaulieu: Twelve Kings
M John Harrison: Light
Aliette de Bodard: The House of Shattered Wings
Christopher Priest: The Prestige
Pat Cadigan: Synners

Note that they seem to be adding books - when I first looked, there were 35 books, now there's 54!

[DrNefario]

I believe/suspect it's something to do with GollanczFest. My feeling is that they might be on sale for more than a day. I've managed to restrain myself to just two, so far (Blackwing by Ed McDonald and The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts; both 2017 releases).