this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
18 points (100.0% liked)

Science Fiction

13488 readers
3 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Tenthrow
18
Looking for a good Sci Fi Novel available on Project Gutenberg (self.sciencefiction)
submitted 1 year ago by PlanetOfOrd to c/sciencefiction
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Been out of work for a while so buying books is out the question (yeah, I get there's always the library, but I don't like it for a lot of reasons).

I like how PG has free books. I realize I'm not going to find top-tier modern writers on PG, but I'm open to suggestions of good reads.

What I look for in sci fi:

  • An idea to chew on; something that stays with me even after I turn the last page.
  • Some emotional intrigue; I want to feel what the characters feel.

What I like to avoid:

  • Technobabble. I like a good story; I don't want to spend half the book understanding how the ship works. (I found Frank Herbet was good with avoiding technobabble...he often obeyed the rule of "show don't tell")

  • Stock characters. Gimme some depth.

A few I've read so far that I'd consider "passable" are Off on a Comet by Jules Vern (I only listen to about 2/3 of this on librivox) and Space Prison by Tom Godwin (although the plot is pretty simplistic).

I just finished Frankenstein. A lot of people think its The Greatest Novel. It was kinda meh. I see why people would get excited about it, but it didn't grab me like it does other people.

Any suggestions?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] boredtortoise 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Library Genesis is also a good source for ebooks

[–] PlanetOfOrd 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! Bookmarked. Kind of on the fence about the ethics of that one, though.

The site enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere.

If something isn't free I don't like to find a way to make it free since that devalues it (for me and for others). Obviously if it's free / in the public domain, that's one thing. But I might see if there's stuff on there that's public domain but not on Gutenberg.

[–] boredtortoise 2 points 1 year ago

Sure. Sometimes it's a handy way to get something on your preferred reader that is otherwise blocked by DRM