Books and Writing Online

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Topics

• Invictus' Book Reviews -- A list of my book reviews and ratings.
• Current reading -- A list of the books I'm currently reading and have read this year.
• SF Links -- The Internet Speculative Fiction Database and other SF resources.
• Authors -- Various authors that I like, such as Glen Cook.
• Booksellers Online -- Amazon.com, A1 Books, Alt.Bookstore,
• Publishers -- Baen Books, Tor Books, Del Rey, and others.
• Writing Resources -- Markets, advice, discussion groups, and more.
• Online Texts -- Project Gutenberg and other resources.
• Newsgroups -- Writing, science fiction and other related newsgroups.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

• The Internet Speculative Fiction Database is the definitive source for information on science fiction, fantasy and horror books and short stories.  Start here if you're looking for information on what books an author has written, what magazine a particular short story was in, and more.
• The Science Fiction Resource Guide is another starting point for finding all kinds of information about SF books, movies, television, authors and more.
• The Lysator Science Fiction & Fantasy Archive. The LSSFA is kindly provided for us by Mats Ohrman in Sweden. It contains bunches of information about science fiction, including:
• Online SF Magazines -- Text from various online fiction magazines containing stories (see the special series section).
• Science Fiction Authors -- A list of sf-authors (like Glen Cook) for which you can get biographical information (as given by other users on the net).
• Science Fiction Books -- Reviews of sf-books grouped by author.
• Science Fiction Movies -- A list of sf-movies (such as Blade Runner) and reviews (by others on the net) of each.
• The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List is a list of the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books as voted by the Internet community.

Authors

• Glen Cook is one of my favorite authors -- a great writer, but unfortunately little known. His rather unique writing style tends to be sparse, describing what is necessary and expecting the reader to pay attention as things shift quickly. The sparse style tends to keep the plot moving yet Cook is still able to paint captivating characters without going deeply into their emotions. You get to know the characters through their actions. Cook builds worlds that are filled with shades of grey rather than black and white. It's not that things are depressing, but rather that there are just few (if any) black and white issues in his stories. The characters tend not to be either purely heroic or purely evil -- they're driven by personal motivations. Their motivations may result in actions that are good or bad, depending on your perspective. And each action has a consequence. You can't count on all the characters making it through the story alive. Cook often gives the sense that there are wheels turning within wheels and you never quite know the full extent of what is happening in the background. You have to try to dig away the layers along with the characters to find out what is really going on.

  Sound interesting? If so, I'd recommend trying out The Black Company which is the first book in The Black Company series. It's probably my favorite series of his and its still easy to find in stores. There was an initial trilogy which you can start with and then move on to more books in the series if you want to.

  Here is a Glen Cook Bibliography if you want to know what else he has done. If you can't find one of his books at Amazon.com (many are now out of print) then you could try AbeBooks which is a fantastic online resource for hard-to-find books. They have 20 million books from a large set of used books stores from around the world. They can be a bit pricy at times, but are well worth it if you can't find it elsewhere.

  The most recent book in The Black Company series, Soldiers Live, is coming out in hardback at the beginning of August, 2000. You can pre-order it from Amazon if you want.

Booksellers

• If you want to search for the best price on a particular book, you can go to Best Book Buys.  You could also try PriceScan which provides price comparisions for books and many other items. They will look up the price of a book at the various online book stores and give you a list to choose from.  You can look a book up by title, author or even ISBN.  Keep in mind that the shipping costs for each store vary, so just because a store has the cheapest price on a particular book doesn't mean the overall cost will be the least.  I include some details on shipping costs for various online bookstores below.
• I joined the amazon.com associates program (where I get a commission on books you buy through my web page). You can search for a book at amazon here:
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• AbeBooks is a fantastic online resource for hard-to-find books. They have 20 million books from a large set of used books stores from around the world. They can be a bit pricy at times, but are well worth it if you can't find it elsewhere.
• Or, you can choose from this incomplete list of online book stores:

 
 

Store	Typical  Softcover  Discount	Typical  Hardcover  Discount	Shipping cost within US  (for 4-10 day delivery)
A1 Books	22%	32%	$3.00 plus $0.99 per book
Alt.Bookstore	22%	30%	$3.00 plus $1.00 per book
The Bookstore at Intertain.com	25%	25%	$3.20 plus $0.75 per book
Amazon.com	20%	30%	$3.30 plus $0.99 per book
Barnes and Noble	20%	30%	$3.00 plus $0.95 per book
Books Now	10%	10%	$4.95 plus $2.00 per book

 

• Book stores specializing in science fiction and fantasy:
• Mysterious Galaxy -- This store specializes in new science fiction/fantasy, horror and mystery.  They also sell signed first editions of new books at cover price.
• Pandora's Books -- Specializes in used and out-of-print science fiction/fantasy, horror and mystery books.
• Science Fiction Book Club -- Membership information and a searchable listing of available books.  Nice discounts on numerous sci-fi and fantasy books.
• Yahoo's site has a very large list of online book sellers, including science fiction and fantasy books.

Publishers

• Baen Books' web page has information about new and future Baen releases as well as some samples. They even have *free* downloadable versions of some books via the Baen Free Library. You can also subscribe to their Webscription service if you want to get early access to new books. Thanks Baen for your common sense approach and working with new technology instead of against it.
  • One of the editorials in the free library section has a speech by Thomas Macaulay which discusses the disadvantages and consequences of long copyright terms. The cool aspect of the speech was that it was made in 1841. Macaulay even predicts that longer copyright terms would encourage the public to ignore them and make their own copies.
• Tor Books' web page has information about new and future Tor releases as well as some cool sample chapters from newly released books! There are even some submission guidelines, if you're interested.
• Del Rey Books has an online newsletter which discusses the latest Del Ray books in the stores. It also has some cool sample chapters from newly released books!
• Spectra Science Fiction Forum has up to date information about books released by Bantam Spectra as well as news on what to look for in the future.

 

Writing Resources

• Critters Writing Workshop provides a workshop where  you can have your science fiction, fantasy or horror stories critiqued.  There are currently over 500 active members at Critters, including a number of professional writers.  To get your story critiqued you must provide feedback on other's stories which helps insure that everyone's stories do get critiqued.
• 4-Writers.com has an extensive array of writing resources, including online classes and seminars, discussion groups, an archive of authors, short fiction, poetry, essays and quotes, as well as other writers' links.
• Young Writers Speculative Fiction Writing Forum -- A cool resource for young writers interested in discussing and learning about writing speculative fiction. It is hosted by Diane Turnshek who has published sf short stories of her own.
• National Poetry Association Website -- A good resource for poets.
• Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr.
• On-Line Dictionaries -- Include multilingual dictionaries, thesauri, and more.
• Roget's Thesaurus
• Encyclopedia Mythica -- An encyclopedia on mythology, folklore and legend.
• Biography Search -- Biographical information on famous historic figures.
• Writer On Line -- Writing how-tos, advice, market information and more.

Online Books and Magazines

• The Gutenberg EText Home Page. The Gutenberg project provides public domain ASCII texts of classic books (such as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and makes them available for reading or downloading.
• Alex is an online catalog of "Electronic Texts on the Internet". It contains links to literally hundreds of online texts, including the above Gutenberg ETexts.  No new texts are currently being added because of a lack of funding.
• An online SF story by Andrew Caldwell.
•  The Online Books Page --Read thousands of books online.

Related Newsgroups

• misc.writing -- A good newsgroup for discussing and getting advice on writing. Also check out the writing FAQs for more information.
• rec.arts.sf.written -- This newsgroup is similar to misc.writing but is specific to the writing of science fiction/fantasy.
• rec.arts.books -- This newsgroup discusses books of all genres and any related issues.
• SF Newsgroups -- A list of science fiction related newsgroups for books, movies, and television.

More Places to Look

• The Internet Book Information Center's Reviews. The IBIC calls itself the World Wide Web Virtual Library. It contains many sources for things like Online books and magazines, authors, publishers, booksellers, reviews and more.
• Reference Shelf
• Libraries