FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Little.Egret]

Amazon UK daily deal, today, Friday

A Closed and Common Orbit: Galactic Commons 2 by Becky Chambers

99p, " the stand-alone sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet"


[url]https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01ARXVTFE/[/url


Also The Fire Queen (The Hundredth Queen Series Book 2) by Emily R. King

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N15EL64/

[orangekiwi]

For those who picked up Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children #1) by Seanan McGuire when it was offered free by Tor earlier this year and enjoyed it book 2,
Down Among the Sticks and Bones is currently on sale for $2.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LM09RGE
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/dow...icks-and-bones


The Summer Tree: Book One of the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay is currently $2.99 in the US
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sum...navar-tapestry

Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs (Alpha and Omega #1) Is currently $2.99
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/cry-wolf-14

and Hunting Ground (book 2) is $1.99
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hunting-ground-1

[Fluribus]

They laughed at me when I refused to give my true name. The Googlemancers own them now. Fools.

Ursula K. LeGuin A Wizard of Earthsea for $2.99 on Amazon.com.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by orangekiwi

Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs (Alpha and Omega #1) Is currently $2.99 https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/cry-wolf-14

and Hunting Ground (book 2) is $1.99
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hunting-ground-1

If you're a series purist, there's a prequel novella that really sets up the start of Cry Wolf. I happened to read them in the right order from the start, but I saw a lot of grumbling online when Cry Wolf first came out.

If I'm remembering correctly, Briggs or her husband had posted on her blog that the novella "Alpha and Omega" was requested as a more romantic story tie-in for a novella anthology. Her publisher or agent liked it so much they asked for more. It's been out long enough now to get the novella as a separate ebook without having to buy the anthology.

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $1.99 in the US only from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Mariner Books imprint (sometimes couponable/VIP-eligible @ Kobo, prices should be same at the other usual retailers):

Tales of Pirx the Pilot by the late Stanislaw Lem (Wikipedia), a collection of his science fiction tales starring the eponymous space pilot (Wikipedia) who apparently has humorous misadventures, translated from the original Polish.

Brilliant stories of a bumbling astronaut, and the human desire to discover the unknown, by the much-loved author of Solaris.

Set in the not-too-distant future, when space flight has evolved to the point where humanity is ready to colonize the solar system, Tales of Pirx the Pilot follows one somewhat-hapless explorer as he struggles though his training as a cadet, his career as a pilot, and his tenure as captain of a merchant ship.

In these collected stories, Pirx stumbles his way through various exploits: traveling to the moon; battling mechanical malfunctions; encountering robots; and confronting questions of ambition, evolution, exploration, experimentation, and the nature of humanity itself. And in classic Pirx fashion, he faces down each dilemma with charm, curiosity, courage, and intuition.

These early works by revered speculative fiction author Stanislaw Lem are filled with both the sharp insight for which he is known and a childlike innocence, making them an entertaining and thought-provoking read for science fiction fans of all ages.

[elaysee]

Brian W. Aldiss's The Helliconia Trilogy: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, and Helliconia Winter is $1.51 at Amazon US right now. This was on sale earlier this year, but when I searched to confirm, I saw comments that some had missed the sale.

From a Science Fiction Grand Master: The sweeping epic of a planet veering from one extreme atmosphere to another—and the humans trying to survive on it.

Helliconia Spring introduces us to a tumultuous world that follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system—and the satellite from Earth secretly monitoring it. Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss then explores the social and religious divisions keeping the planet’s population in conflict even as they’re devastated by plague in Helliconia Summer, and concludes the trilogy with Helliconia Winter, which recounts both the threat of a looming, frigid age of decay and the hope of a new future.

The Helliconia Trilogy is both a riveting story and a thought-provoking examination of how our destinies are shaped by the environment around us. Aldiss’s study of fields from astronomy to climatology to geobiology endow all three novels with rich details of the planet Helliconia.

This riveting, century-spanning saga is a timely exploration of what climate change can mean for our own planet. “Brian Aldiss’s towering imagination places his Helliconia Trilogy far above standard science fiction” (Daily Mail).

[ATDrake]

X-link to the Non-Fiction megathread for two Tolkien-related bargains:

@ $1.99 each in US and/or Canada:

• Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth by Tolkien scholar John Garth, a biography focusing on the WWI years and their subsequent personal and literary influence, which won him a 2004 Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the US only.
• A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18 by Joseph Loconte, an associate professor of history at The King's College in New York City, examining the faith-related portions of both writers' works as influenced their wartime experiences, out from HarperCollins' Zondervan imprint, which is a dedicated Christian religious line, also discounted in Canada.

[ATDrake]

Bargain @ $2.99 in the US only from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (this one is non-couponable; price should be the same at all the usual stores):

A Scanner Darkly by the late Philip K. Dick, his vintage classic dystopian novel (Wikipedia) of drug use and abuse in a futuristic (circa 1977) California counterculture, which won the British Fantasy Society Award and was also adapted to film and graphic novel.

Bob Arctor is a junkie and a drug dealer, both using and selling the mind-altering Substance D. Fred is a law enforcement agent, tasked with bringing Bob down. It sounds like a standard case. The only problem is that Bob and Fred are the same person. Substance D doesn’t just alter the mind, it splits it in two, and neither side knows what the other is doing or that it even exists. Now, both sides are growing increasingly paranoid as Bob tries to evade Fred while Fred tries to evade his suspicious bosses.

In this award-winning novel, friends can become enemies, good trips can turn terrifying, and cops and criminals are two sides of the same coin. Dick is at turns caustically funny and somberly contemplative, fashioning a novel that is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

[Little.Egret]

Amazon UK discount some recent new Baen books

So within the last few days

From November

The Spark by David Drake £4.69

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spark-David...dp/B075X27FCV/

From October

Chain of Command by Frank Chadwick £4.48

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chain-Comma...dp/B075TCPJ6Q/

And (some previously posted)

September

Iron Angels by Eric Flint and Alistair Kimble £4.69

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Iron-Angels...dp/B074F12X1D/


The Bronze Skies (Skolian Empire Series Book 8) by Catherine Asaro £4.48

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bronze-Skie...dp/B074QVRKS2/

All very good value at less than Baen's list prices will be in a year when the mmpb comes out.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Amazon US discount some recent new Baen books

From November

The Spark by David Drake $7.99 reduced from $9.99

https://www.amazon.com/Spark-David-D...dp/B075X27FCV/

[ATDrake]

X-link to the DRM-free thread for some new bundles:

Bundle of Holding, which normally offers RPG tie-ins, is re-running two old offers which may be of interest:

Stone Skin Press, RPG publisher Pelgrane Press' prose fiction spin-off, with a mostly sfnal genre selection of themed original anthologies (and a webcomic collection) with some established contributors including horror great Ramsey Campbell, Tor-published authors Alex Bledsoe and Tobias S. Buckell, Prime-published author Ekaterina Sedia, and a host of lesser-knowns, for just $11 or so for 9 titles.

And they're re-offering The Dying Earth containing the RPG tie-in for the late Jack Vance's popular fantasy setting, including some compendiums with world backgrounder information apparently approved and possibly contributed to by Vance himself, including one with official recipes. This has 5 new titles in it since the last time, and if you bought it then, they have automatically been added to your library with no further purchase necessary.

And a reminder that the excellent Humble Book Bundle Stellar Sci-Fi & Fantasy presented by Tachyon expires in a couple of days.

[ZodWallop]

Greg Bear's The Forge of God is $1.99 at Amazon:

On July 26, Arthur Gordon learns that Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, has disappeared. Not hiding, not turned black, but gone.

On September 28th, Edward Shaw finds an error in the geological records of Death Valley. A cinder cone was left off the map. Could it be new? Or, stranger yet, could it be artificial? The answer may be lying beside it—a dying Guest who brings devastating news for Edward and for Planet Earth.

As more unexplained phenomena spring up around the globe—a granite mountain appearing in Australia, sounds emanating from the earth’s core, flashes of light among the asteroids—it becomes clear to some that the end is approaching, and there is nothing we can do.

In The Forge of God, award-winning author Greg Bear describes the final days of the world on both a massive, scientific scale and in the everyday, emotional context of individual human lives. Facing the destruction of all they know, some people turn to God, others to their families, and a few turn to saviors promising escape from a planet being torn apart. Will they make it in time? And who gets left behind to experience the last moments of beauty and chaos on earth?

Nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, The Forge of God is an engrossing read, breathtaking in its scope and in its detail.

[maddz]

Finally on Amazon.co.uk Countdown deals:

Andrew J Offutt & Richard Lyon: Web of the Spider, book 3 of War of the Wizards (Tiana the pirate queen)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Web-Spider-...590581&sr=1-60

[ATDrake]

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

The WordFire Press Super Showcase Bundle contains selections from Kevin J. Anderson's own WordFire Press imprint. For $15, you get 17 titles, which do seem to be mainly new novels from newer authors (albeit many with decent previous non-novel writing credits, several award-winning in other fields, according to their bio-blurbs).

There are also a couple of themed anthologies of short stories by fairly well-known sfnal authors (including a festive holiday one with shorts by Mercedes Lackey, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Patricia Briggs, and more) and backlist works by Anderson himself and Mike Resnick.

[bookmarked]

Orbit Debut Authors Class of 2017

Orbit has 10 debut novels on sale for $2.99 each through 12/13/2017. Many are the first book of a series. After reading the descriptions and reviews, I wound up buying 2 of them and marking 3 others as possibilities.

https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-debut-authors/

There is a link on that page for the UK version of this offer. The UK offer is for 7 of the same books for £1.99 each.