{"id":1340,"date":"2007-11-12T00:10:19","date_gmt":"2007-11-11T22:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/12\/free-scifi-books\/"},"modified":"2007-11-12T00:10:26","modified_gmt":"2007-11-11T22:10:26","slug":"free-scifi-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/12\/free-scifi-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Free SciFi books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/manybooks.net\/titles\/godwint2254922549.html#\"><img src='https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/godwin_space_prison.jpg' alt='Space Prison from Tom Godwin' align=\"right\"\/><\/a>A few weeks ago <a href=\"http:\/\/manybooks.net\/\">ManyBooks.net<\/a> started to make available a number of SciFi books in PDF format and without any unreasonable restrictions (this is copyrighted material that has been left in the public domain).<\/p>\n<p>Decided to give it a try and not knowing these books, I chose (randomly) to download <a href=\"http:\/\/manybooks.net\/titles\/godwint2254922549.html#\">Space Prison<\/a> from Tom Godwin (published in 1958 in the middle of the Golden Age of Science Fiction).<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if it is similar to the other books found on this web site, but I can give you an idea of what I found. First, I noticed that the writing is simplistic (it won&#8217;t create any difficulty for non-English speakers digging into this English book). Then, I noticed how much the science was weak (or even shallow): For example, the derelict exiles attempt (and succeed) to build a hyperspace transmitter out of iron, copper and aluminium while their best technological success is a fast-reloading crossbow (that could not make a more-or-less reliable gun).<\/p>\n<p>However, this is a nice story about men been exiled and living through generations for one single goal. Stamina and pure will transcend them leading to a quite predictible end. Despite all its shortcomings, it&#8217;s still a nice story. 80 pages is a little too long for what should have been a good short story, but I read it with pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>It probably means that <a href=\"http:\/\/manybooks.net\/\">ManyBooks.net<\/a> is publishing second-grade SciFi matter (unfortunately not some of the best works of a genre which has so few real gems), but it&#8217;s still worth the price you pay for it. You should stop there and download a couple of the most interesting books.<\/p>\n<p>PS: For those of you who would be interested, I read the novel on my Palm T|X using the Adobe PDF reader: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/acrobat\/readerforpalm.html\">Adobe Reader for Palm OS<\/a>. Very good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago ManyBooks.net started to make available a number of SciFi books in PDF format and without any unreasonable restrictions (this is copyrighted material that has been left in the public domain). Decided to give it a try and not knowing these books, I chose (randomly) to download Space Prison from Tom Godwin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,15,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-legal-downloads","category-sciences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}