FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[DustyDisks]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A more modern problem is the author who churns out the first books of a series, looks at the feedback from sales and realizes his/her time would be better spent collecting refundable bottles on the street so the final book in the series never gets written.

Cannot disagree!

Worst are they that have a story line and stretch it out, and being short on words, mostly for profit, and not the art of the story.

I hate serials but will follow a good story line, to my regret and enjoyment.

King is a master, of the story line. Along with others or want to bees .Beezzzs



Imho

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DustyDisks

God, I hope no other author takes dam near 30 years to compleat his/hers story line. Hell to be left hanging that long. I was lucky I still had his early books, that I had to read before the last in the series just to bring myself up to speed.

If not sorry for your loss..

To be clear: I was referring to The Stand, which is a single, long book. When it was originally published he was a best selling author and his publisher made him trim the book down by a few hundred pages.

Twelve years later, he was STEPHEN KING and he was able to get the book published as he'd intended.

The series you're thinking of is The Dark Tower. I've never read all of it. But I always remember King saying that he wrote it as it came to him and there was every possibility that the series would never end.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by DNSB

A more modern problem is the author who churns out the first books of a series, looks at the feedback from sales and realizes his/her time would be better spent collecting refundable bottles on the street so the final book in the series never gets written.

I think you're unfairly pinning the blame on the author. I've asked several SF authors about their incomplete series, and in every case, the publisher of the original series chose not to buy the next book in the series, and they were unable to find a new publisher for the series. Finding a new publisher for an incomplete series is really hard if the rights haven't reverted back to the author, and even if the rights have reverted, it's still hard.

Perhaps in the modern age of self-publishing, there is enough potential sales for authors to finish their series as self-published (e)books, especially if they get the rights back for the rest of the series, but a lot of mid-list published authors only write the books for which they get an contract and an advance because it's a guaranteed income. I think authors earning a decent living via self-publishing is a recent development, though, and it's probably harder to do than making the same amount by selling their books to a publisher.

BTW, in a recent twitter exchange from Ursula Vernon, when asked about a possible sequel to her children's fantasy novel Castle Hangnail, replied "I'd love to, but the publisher didn't buy it!"

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I think you're unfairly pinning the blame on the author. I've asked several SF authors about their incomplete series, and in every case, the publisher of the original series chose not to buy the next book in the series, and they were unable to find a new publisher for the series. Finding a new publisher for an incomplete series is really hard if the rights haven't reverted back to the author, and even if the rights have reverted, it's still hard.

Series and traditional publishers I can live with as that is very often not the author's choice. Or as with the WIZ series where the author's ill health ended his writing career.

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Perhaps in the modern age of self-publishing, there is enough potential sales for authors to finish their series as self-published (e)books, especially if they get the rights back for the rest of the series, but a lot of mid-list published authors only write the books for which they get an contract and an advance because it's a guaranteed income. I think authors earning a decent living via self-publishing is a recent development, though, and it's probably harder to do than making the same amount by selling their books to a publisher.

The self-published authors are the ones I was referring to. From my discussions with several self-pubbed authors, if you can build up a following (and that is a fairly big IF), you can make a decent living off less sales than a traditionally published author but you will be doing a lot more of the work. You can also churn out more books per year than a traditional publisher would consider publishing which can also help to boost your income.

Now read one of those books which comes complete with the now traditional advertising at the end for other books. Read the sample chapter for the next book in the series. Wait a while and notice the publication date for that next book has passed. Email the author and get informed that the sales numbers for the series were not as good as desired so nothing other than the teaser chapter was ever written. If the series was written so each book could be read as a stand-alone, it's not so bad but when Pauline has been left tied to the tracks, the train is inbound and that's all she wrote... Did I mention cliffhangers are not my favourite endings?

[Richwood]

Originally Posted by DustyDisks

God, I hope no other author takes dam near 30 years to compleat his/hers story line. Hell to be left hanging that long. I was lucky I still had his early books, that I had to read before the last in the series just to bring myself up to speed.

If not sorry for your loss..

The Sten series of 8 original books took about 10 years, from the early 1980s to early 1990s to be published. Authors Alan Cole and Chris Bunch. A ninth book was recently added to the series too. Close to 37 years total. All available as ebooks.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If the series was written so each book could be read as a stand-alone, it's not so bad but when Pauline has been left tied to the tracks, the train is inbound and that's all she wrote... Did I mention cliffhangers are not my favourite endings?

Hey now, just the idea of a train barreling down on poor Pauline, and about to go over a cliff, is quite intriguing, and probably more fun to think of your own outcome! Also makes me think that exact situation might be in an episode of the Road Runner cartoons, only it'd probably be Wile E. on the tracks, caught in his own trap.

But I get your point, cliffhangers that are never resolved really suck.

[bgalbrecht]

I take back what I said, for two SF and fantasy series. I'm still waiting for David Gerrold to finish A Method for Madness, the fifth book in the War Against the Chtorr series. The fourth book was published in 1994, and included a teaser for the fifth book. I believe Gerrold says that the entire series will be seven books (if he ever finishes it). So all you Game of Thrones fans have nothing to complain about, and anyway, Neil Gaiman says "George R. R. Martin is not your bitch".

SALE ALERT:

Tor.com has about 50 ebooks on sale for $1.99 and $2.99. I'm not sure whether there's a link for this at Amazon, Kobo, et. al., but here's one at B&N. Most of them are novellas, but at least one is a novel that Tor gave away last year.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I seem to remember thinking that looking up decimal to binary in a book and entering the binary numbers into the computer then converting the computer's light display back to decimal was a bit silly. But then in 1952-3 when the book was written, it would be quite possible the computer would not have had enough memory to store the lookup tables. Grasping at straws here...

Maybe it's my background, but it's the idea of looking up the conversions in a book that strikes me as silly. I do most one-byte conversions in my head, two-byte values might take me a little longer, and if I can't do that for some reason (large values, or maybe not enough sleep), a pencil and a scrap of paper do just dandy.

I mean, seriously - take 10101001. Split it into four-digit pieces to make things easy: 1010 and 1001. Anyone who knows what binary is should be able to read those as "ten" and "nine." Getting that to decimal is simple: "ten times sixteen plus nine" equals 169. Going to hex is even easier: ten is A, nine is 9, write 'em next to each other, that's A9. (There's a reason we use four-bit chunks!) Works almost as easily in reverse.

Or, for a more timely comparison that RAH should have been able to figure out, if a WWII ship's radio operator can transcribe Morse code by ear because that's his job, his Space Patrol counterpart who works with binary-decimal-hex all day long will be just at good at translating that in his head. Even better, probably; Morse code relies on remembering a table, whereas this is grade-school multiplication.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Maybe it's my background, but it's the idea of looking up the conversions in a book that strikes me as silly. I do most one-byte conversions in my head, two-byte values might take me a little longer, and if I can't do that for some reason (large values, or maybe not enough sleep), a pencil and a scrap of paper do just dandy.

I think the characters in the book used the reference books because a simple mistake of a single digit would put them in another part of the galaxy.....which is exactly what happened. (Are spoiler alerts necessary for a book several decades old? )

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by GlennD

I think the characters in the book used the reference books because a simple mistake of a single digit would put them in another part of the galaxy.....which is exactly what happened. (Are spoiler alerts necessary for a book several decades old? )

Similar stakes apply to transcribing Morse code. Nuclear stakes, for example.

EDIT: I mean, I get using logarithmic tables and geometric function tables, and that's probably the correspondence RAH was drawing. Trouble is, deriving sine and tangent values is much more complicated than remembering how to multiply and divide by two.

[orangekiwi]

I also posted this in the kobo thread but since there are so many good science fiction/fantasy books I'm re-posting it here too

Kobo has a start a new series for up to 85% off deal available until 24 January according to the webpage
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/startanewseries

The options this time seem to include a large number from traditional publishers,.
For example in the “Otherworldly Science Fiction & Fantasy” section I have found books from Anne McCaffrey, Jack Campbell, Anne Bishop, Jim Butcher, Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Charles Stross, Guy Gavriel Kay and many more authors which I enjoy.
I’m not sure if these are publisher specials or kobo specific but this sale is worth looking at.

There are also sections for mystery, romance, kids and YA

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Similar stakes apply to transcribing Morse code. Nuclear stakes, for example.

EDIT: I mean, I get using logarithmic tables and geometric function tables, and that's probably the correspondence RAH was drawing. Trouble is, deriving sine and tangent values is much more complicated than remembering how to multiply and divide by two.

Is it possible that the author left some recognizable technology in so that readers could have some common cultural touchpoints and possibly relate to the story better?

It has always seemed to me that science fiction that was too 'Out there' never did as well commercially as SF that was more believable to the reader. Those lines are now a bit blurry because, well, practically anything seems possible now. But in the middle of the 20th century, I don't think that was true.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

Is it possible that the author left some recognizable technology in so that readers could have some common cultural touchpoints and possibly relate to the story better?

Many things are possible. Lacking a credible medium to hold a seance, though, that question has no meaningful answer in this context.

[Auricle]

Getting back to the topic, ahem. Mcmillan seems to be having a sale on a decent number of SFF books:

http://macmillanedeals.com/

Some familiar authors in there but can't say I've read any of these titles.

[DustyDisks]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

Similar stakes apply to transcribing Morse code. Nuclear stakes, for example.

EDIT: I mean, I get using logarithmic tables and geometric function tables, and that's probably the correspondence RAH was drawing. Trouble is, deriving sine and tangent values is much more complicated than remembering how to multiply and divide by two.

Look up the call sign KI5NM...

73's

Old shool extra class, first licensed ? 1963 ?? or so.. was 13 , before I discovered women. then life went down hill, lmfao..

Let the games began....hoot.