FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[salty-horse]

Making History by K. J. Parker is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
New novella.

In K. J. Parker's new whip-smart dark fantasy, a group of scholars must do the impossible for a ruthless king. The cost of refusal, of course, is death.

History isn't truth, it's propaganda.

Seeking war with his neighbor, the tyrannical ruler of Aelia convenes several of his kingdom's professors for a chat. First Citizen Gyges only just invaded Aelia a few years back and, naturally, his public image can’t take the hit of another unjustified assault.

His totally sane solution? Simple, really. These scholars must construct a fake ancient city from scratch to verify Gyges’s apocryphal claims.

Now these academics must put their heads together to make history. Because if they don't, they'll lose their heads altogether.

[elaysee]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Making History by K. J. Parker is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
New novella.

Ha! I made a note last week to pick this up (for regular price) the next time I had other books I wanted. Good things come to those who wait, and who pay attention to salty-horse.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by elaysee

Ha! I made a note last week to pick this up (for regular price) the next time I had other books I wanted. Good things come to those who wait, and who pay attention to salty-horse.

BTW, Making History is dealing with a similar theme of history of propaganda as The Isle in the Silver Sea, which is still on sale, and Alix E. Harrow's The Everlasting, which is due for a discount soon

[WashWest]

A graduate student of anthropology haunted by disturbing visions of the future is called upon to save an alien species from extinction? Take my money!!

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Save one world. Doom her own.

Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future.

Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.

Maya sets out on a breakneck quest through a universe teeming with strange life and ancient ruins. But the farther she goes, the more her visions cast a dark shadow over her team of friends new and old. Someone will betray her along the way. Worse yet, in choosing to save one species, she may condemn humanity and Earth itself.

[salty-horse]

Non-fiction.

Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Morris is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work.

As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project—the nation’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut—made possible by chattel slavery—to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion.

In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her life: the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butler’s personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs, they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butler’s stories.

Morris explains what drove Butler: She wrote because she felt she must. “Who was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn’t stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.”

[Quoth]

Jed the Dead by Alan Dean Foster
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/jed-the-dead-1
£1.99 (or less if VIP)

Not read it, but IMO some of his other non-Franchise books were good. I've read some of his novelisations/franchise titles too.

[Quoth]

Equal Rites (Terry Pratchett), an early but good Discworld (IMO) is on sale again. Last time I got it on Amazon. Now on Kobo
99p
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/equal-rites-2

[salty-horse]

Up Against It by Laura J. Mixon is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's frontier. They're your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes that are the million eyes of 'Stroiders, a reality-TV show whose Earthside producers have paid handsomely for the privilege of spying on every detail of the Phocaeans' lives.
Life isn't as good as it seems, though. A mysterious act of sabotage kills Geoff's brother Carl and puts the entire colony at risk. And in short order, we discover that the whole thing may have been cooked up by the Martian mafia, as a means of executing a coup and turning Phocaea into a client-state. As if that wasn't bad enough, there's a rogue AI that was spawned during the industrial emergency and slipped through the distracted safeguards, and a giant x-factor in the form of the Viridians, a transhumanist cult that lives in Phocaea's bowels.
In addition to Geoff, our story revolves around Jane, the colony's resource manager -- a bureaucrat engineer in charge of keeping the plumbing running on an artificial island of humanity poised on the knife-edge of hard vacuum and unforgiving space. She's more than a century old, and good at her job, but she is torn between the technical demands of the colony and the political realities of her situation, in which the fishbowl effect of 'Stroiders is compounded by a reputation economy that turns every person into a beauty contest competitor. Her manoeuverings to keep politics and engineering in harmony are the heart of the book.

[salty-horse]

Faller by Will McIntosh is $0.5 on Amazon.com (only. Digital list price discount)

Faller is a new gripping standalone, science fiction thriller by Hugo Award-winning author Will McIntosh.
Day One: No one can remember anything—who they are, family and friends, or even how to read. Reality has fragmented and Earth consists of an islands of rock floating in an endless sky. Food, water, electricity—gone, except for what people can find, and they can't find much.
Faller's pockets contain tantalizing clues: a photo of himself and a woman he can't remember, a toy solider with a parachute, and a mysterious map drawn in blood. With only these materials as a guide, he makes a leap of faith from the edge of the world to find the woman and set things right.
He encounters other floating islands, impossible replicas of himself and others, and learns that one man hates him enough to take revenge for actions Faller can't even remember.

[salty-horse]

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow is $7 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
Only 50% off, but mentioning because it's a new release. If you're not itching to read it, wait for a deeper discount.

From Alix E. Harrow, the New York Times bestselling author of Starling House, comes a moving and genre-defying quest about the lady-knight whose legend built a nation, and the cowardly historian sent back through time to make sure she plays her part–even if it breaks his heart.

Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters—but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.

Centuries later, Owen Mallory—failed soldier, struggling scholar—falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives—and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.

But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend—if they want to tell a different story--they’ll have to rewrite history itself.

[salty-horse]

More of Me by Kathryn Evans is $0.5 on Amazon.com (only. Digital list price discount)
Young adult.

"A relatable look at growing up, negotiating changes in one's body and personality, and learning to accept one's present self and honor one's past." ― Publishers Weekly

Teva goes to school, studies for her exams, and spends time with her friends. To the rest of the world, she's a normal teenager. But when she goes home, she's anything but normal. Due to a genetic abnormality, Teva unwillingly clones herself every year. And lately, home has become a battleground. When boys are at stake, friends are lost, and lives are snatched away, Teva has a fight on her hands—a fight with herself. As her birthday rolls around, Teva is all too aware that time is running out. She knows that the next clone will soon seize everything she holds dear. Desperate to hang on to her life, Teva decides to find out more about her past . . . and uncovers lies that could either destroy her or set her free.

"A nifty premise." — Kirkus Reviews

"A profound, complex examination of how we relate to our own history." ― Booklist

"The writing throughout is excellent . . . Realistic fiction fans will connect to Teva and will be drawn in enough to want to read the conclusion." ― School Library Journal

[salty-horse]

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3) by Heather Fawcett is £3 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)

[salty-horse]

Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
Space Western set in the world of The Pandominion (Infinity Gate)

From one of genre fiction’s most original and revolutionary voices comes a space opera adventure like no other. Sometimes the fate of entire worlds can be decided by a woman with nothing to lose, and the smartest gun in the multiverse in her hand . . .

This is the story of Bess - or Dog-Bitch Bess as she came to be known. It's the story of the gun she carried, whose name was Wakeful Slim. It's the story of the dead man who carried that gun before her and left a piece of himself inside it. And it's the tale of how she turned from teacher, to renegade, and ultimately to hero.

This is also the tale of the last violent engagements in an inter-dimensional war - one of the most brutal the multiverse had ever seen.

This is how Bess learned the truth about her world. Came to it the hard way, through pain and loss and the reckless spilling of blood, and carried it with her like a brand on her soul. And once she knew it - knew for sure how badly she'd been used - she had no option but to do something about it.

[salty-horse]

To Clutch a Razor (Curse Bearer #2) by Veronica Roth is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
I liked the first novella.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth pulls from Slavic folklore to explore family, duty, and what it means to be a monster in this sequel to the USA Today bestselling novella When Among Crows.

A funeral. A heist. A desperate mission.

When Dymitr is called back to the old country for the empty night, a funeral rite intended to keep evil at bay, it's the perfect opportunity for him to get his hands on his family's most guarded relic—a book of curses that could satisfy the debt he owes legendary witch Baba Jaga. But first he'll have to survive a night with his dangerous, monster-hunting kin.

As the sun sets, the line between enemies and allies becomes razor-thin, and Dymitr’s new loyalties are pushed to their breaking point.

Family gatherings can be brutal. Dymitr’s might just be fatal.

[WillAdams]

Two Clifford D. Simak short story collections (out of 14 total) are on sale for the Kindle:

Buckets of Diamonds: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 13) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...oreType=ebooks

No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...oreType=ebooks