FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by GlennD

There are a number of John Christopher books on sale on Amazon for $1. (Unfortunately the Tripod books are not among them.) A particular favorite of mine is 'The Death of Grass' (which as an American I read as 'No Blade of Brass'), written in 1956 about a Chinese virus that kills grasses.

The link is to a search of his books, sorted by price.

Bought four of the $1.00 ebooks.

Thank you!

[ReadingManiac]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

^

That would be a GREAT title for a horror collection!

Fortunately, titles are not copyrighted.

Agreed! Took me a search to work out where I heard of Frances Hardinge. I read Deeplight a while back. Very weird but good.

[salty-horse]

Crossposted to Horror thread.
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is $2.99 on Amazon.com

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

[tch65721]

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill - $1.99

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01B3VMCI2

Winner of the 2017 Newbery Award
The New York Times Bestseller

An Entertainment Weekly Best Middle Grade Book of 2016
A New York Public Library Best Book of 2016
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2016
An Amazon Top 20 Best Book of 2016
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016
A School Library Journal Best Book of 2016
Named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2016
2017 Booklist Youth Editors’ Choice

[salty-horse]

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec is $1.99 on Amazon.com

When a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this moving, subversive debut novel that reimagines Norse mythology.

Angrboda's story begins where most witches' tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to provide him with knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the farthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be Loki, and her initial distrust of him transforms into a deep and abiding love.

Their union produces three unusual children, each with a secret destiny, who Angrboda is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin's all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life—and possibly all of existence—is in danger.

With help from the fierce huntress Skadi, with whom she shares a growing bond, Angrboda must choose whether she’ll accept the fate that she's foreseen for her beloved family…or rise to remake their future. From the most ancient of tales this novel forges a story of love, loss, and hope for the modern age.

[Tarana]

The Cyberiad By Stanislaw Lem $1.99

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cyberiad-Stor...0553087&sr=8-1
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-cyberiad-3

These are the stories of Trurl and Klapaucius, master inventors and engineers known as “constructors,” who have created marvels for kingdoms. Friends and rivals, they are constantly outdoing and challenging each other to reveal the next great evolution in cybernetics, and the exploits of these brilliant men are nothing short of incredible.

From tales of love, in which a robotic prince must woo a robotic princess enchanted by pleasures of true flesh, to epics of battle, in which the heroic constructors must use their considerable wit to outsmart a monarch obsessed with hunting, to examinations of humanity, wherein Trurl and Klapaucius must confront the limits of their skills and the meaning of true perfection, these stories are rich with profound questions, unimaginable marvels, and remarkable feats.

Hailed as “the most completely successful of [Lem’s] books,” The Cyberiad is an outrageously funny and incomparably wise collection of short stories, taking an insightful look at mechanics, technology, invention, and human ambition (The Boston Globe).

[ReadingManiac]

HP Lovecraft Complete Collection is on $1.99 Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/H-P-Lovecraft.../dp/B078XHJL5Y

or £0.75 Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-P-Lovecra.../dp/B078XHJL5Y

I believe this is a Deal of the Day.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by ReadingManiac

HP Lovecraft Complete Collection is on $1.99 Amazon.com

This is just a collection of works in the public domain. All stories are already available for free.
Here's an equivalent, free, collection: https://arkhamarchivist.com/free-com...k-nook-kindle/

[Tarana]

The Werewolf Principle By Clifford D. Simak $1.99
Science Fiction

A classic from a Hugo Award–winning author! Returning to Earth after more than a century of hibernation in space, voyager Andrew Blake discovers he shares his body with other beings beyond his control… “To read science fiction is to read Simak” (Robert A. Heinlein).

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Werewolf-Prin...t%2C192&sr=1-1
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...lf-principle-1

[ZodWallop]

Pool of Radiance by James M. Ward is $1.99 at Amazon US. This is the first book in a trilogy called The Heroes of Phlan.

Not only is it a D&D novel, it is based on a D&D video game. But the Heroes of Phlan trilogy is regularly cited as among the best of the D&D novels.

A possessed dragon commands the undead armies of Valhingen Graveyard and the beasts from the ruins of Phlan. In the midst of this chaos stand three heroes: Shal Bal, a spellcaster, seeks to avenge the death of her wizard master, while Ren—a ranger thief—sets out on a revenge quest of his own, intent on evening the score between himself and the assassin who murdered his beloved Tempest. And then there’s Tarl Desanea, a cleric-warrior who has seen just what kind of devastation the army of Valhingen Graveyard can wreak. He has witnessed far too many friends die at the hands of the undead horde.

When fate brings the trio together at the Laughing Goblin Inn, they are brought before the head of the Council of Ten. Under the command of Porphyrys Cadorna, they embark on dangerous missions throughout the realm, only to discover their newfound advisor is not who they presumed him to be. Now, it's up to Shal, Ren, and Tarl to deliver Phlan—and the entire Moonsea—from the possession of evil reincarnate: Tyranthraxus.

[salty-horse]

Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov is $1.99 on Amazon.com
A prequel to the Foundation series, focusing on Hari Seldon.


Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky is $2.99 on Amazon.com
Was on my wishlist. Just $1 discount on this novella, but just what I've been irrationally waiting for. The science-fantasy stuff I like - a society unaware it's in a science-fictional setting.

A junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…

[ZodWallop]

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is $1.99 at Amazon US.

With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. As an added bonus, the e-book edition of this New York Times bestseller includes an excerpt from Stephenson's new novel, Seveneves.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy—is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702—commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia—a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov is $1.99 on Amazon.com
A prequel to the Foundation series, focusing on Hari Seldon.

While it's a prequel, I'd recommend reading the other novels first (the original trilogy and the two later sequels). You'll get a lot more out of it, and some things will be less confusing if you have. The first three combined aren't much longer than the two sequels are individually, so it's not as large a time commitment as it sounds like at first.

With the sequels and prequels to the Foundation trilogy, Asimov tied his Robot series together with the Foundation one, making it clear they were all in the same universe. This lengthy list of novels is all in the same universe. (In chronological, not publishing order.):

Spoiler:

Robots
I, Robot (collection of short stories)
The Rest of the Robots (collection of short stories)
The Caves of Steel
The Naked Sun
The Robots of Dawn
Robots and Empire

Galactic Empire
The Stars, Like Dust
The Currents of Space
Pebble in the Sky

Foundation
Prelude to Foundation
Forward the Foundation
Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation
Foundation's Edge
Foundation and Earth

I've read them all multiple times. Asimov's a great author.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Manabi

With the sequels and prequels to the Foundation trilogy, Asimov tied his Robot series together with the Foundation one, making it clear they were all in the same universe.

That was a mistake. They weren't originally written that way. When Heinlein came along with his Future History, it became the thing to do to link all stories together into a universe.

[Tarana]

The Unreal and the Real By Ursula K. Le Guin $1.99 Amazon, Kobo
Anthology of her short stories. Curated by author. List of stories at both links.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Unreal-Real-S...al-text&sr=1-1
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the...l-and-the-real