booklist

Not much October travel, yahoo! Game-wise it’s still StarDew Valley and Skyrim on computer and console, D&D5E and Star Wars RPG (Fantasy Flight) for tabletop.

In television, I’m happy to have a new season of DC Legends and The Flash start; I’ve been working my way through The Arrow and am finishing up Season 2 now, but it lacks the humor and sweetness of the other two. We did finally get around to watching season 1 of Stranger things, which didn’t really grab me much at first, but finally won me over. We finished that up last night and are looking forward to season 2.

As part of my reading, I did learn how to pick a lock this month, or at least have gotten to the point where I can pick the practice one in about ten seconds (which makes me feel a little badass, but in a pretty limited way) and also understand both how a skeleton key works and what a padlock shim is. I figure this will be a useful skill, post zombie-apocalypse. Maybe. Lotsa story ideas brewing from it, though, including a new Serendib piece.

Here’s the books I read:

Anonymous. Visual Guide to Lockpicking.
Michael Bishop. Light Years and Dark. One of the strongest anthologies I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across.
Leigh Brackett. The Long Tomorrow.
Rutger Bregman. Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build an Ideal World. Great argument for basic income, lots of fascinating history of what’s been tried (and worked with amazing effectiveness).
Chesya Burke. Let’s Play White.
Chesya Burke. The Strange Crimes of Little Africa.
Robert Coram. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. Interesting bio, particularly if you’re curious about 4GWarfare since his concepts inform it.
Tananarive Due. The Black Rose.
Tananarive Due. My Soul to Keep.
George Alec Effinger. Heroics.
Laurie Forest. The Black Witch.
Victor Gischler. Ink Mage.
Robert Graves. Watch the North Wind Rise. Well, that was interesting, is all I’m going to say about that.
Charlaine Harris, Day Shift.
Brandon Massey. Whispers in the Night.
Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. Space Opera.
Nnedi Okarafor. Binti.
Lorenzo Pecchi and Gustavo Piga. Revisiting Keynes: Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.
Declan Shalvey. Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan #1.
Michael Swanwick, Being Gardner Dozois.
Pamela Samuels Young. Buying Time.

A major joy of my new Kindle is finding free books. I figured other people might appreciate some of the finds (and might share some of their own – bonus!).

So here’s a slew of classic science fiction novels, available free online on Project Gutenberg. (Kindle users, it’s so so easy to mail files onto your Kindle, although it’s not free when you’re moving books on there, but costs a .15 per MB, with a book running 2-4 MB, depending.)

1. Flatland by Edwin Abbot. The story of life in two dimensions, written in 1884 by an English schoolmaster, it originally boasted “A Square” as author.
2. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of the great pulp writers, Burroughs’ work is well represented on Project Gutenberg, and provides a taste of old school sf at its best. including the Mars, Pellucidar, and Tarzan series.
3. R.U.R. by Karel Capek. This Czechoslovakian play first was staged in 1921. It deals with the rise of the robots, and their final rebellion against the humans.
4. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Written by one of the early suffrage leaders, Gilman posits a society without men, and in the tradition of such utopian fiction, explains it at length.
5. Deathworld by Harry Harrison. The first of the Deathworld series, this deals with gambler Jason dinAlt and his visit to the deadliest planet in the universe.
6. Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick. No one can be a science fiction fan without at least a little Philip K. Dick in their reading background (in my opinion). Prolific, full of wild imagination, and talented, he produced novels and short stories that are a major influence on the field. Others to read by Dick: Valis, Ubik), Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and (always) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which inspired the movie Bladerunner). I’m happy to see so many P.K. Dick novels available on the Kindle, but I miss Eye in the Sky and The Man in the High Castle.
7. Time Traders by Andre Norton. Norton brought countless readers to f&sf through her YA novels. Time Traders is the first of a series and follows sharp-jawed, keen-eyed Ross Murdock in his quest for lost alien technology.
8. Galaxy Primes by E.E. Smith. Another of the Golden Age writers, Smith does space opera like no one else. Here two men and two men are lost in space and must somehow chart their way back to their home planet, Earth.
9. Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. There’s a lot of Wells to pick from, but this is one of my favorites, and certainly has inspired plenty of other works, both books and movies. I’ll note that you should read Ralph Ellison’s version first – while not strictly sf, it’s surreal and enlightening and a great take on the idea.

And the tenth? I’m leaving it up to you to supply, dear readers – what would you suggest, what have you found online that delighted or amazed you?

(Coming tomorrow: story prompt!!)

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