some new science fiction at project

some new science fiction at Project Gutenberg

Three new eBooks that I worked on have been added to Project

Gutenberg:

"A World is Born" by Leigh Brackett, from Comet magazine, July 1941.

This short story is one of her "sword-and-planet" stories that took

place in the rest of the Solar System; of course almost nothing was

known about what the planets were like, so this provided the

opportunity for writers to imagine what might be there. Brackett's

versions drew upon existing genre tropes, but had a special quality of

their own; the environments were vivid enough to almost be characters

of their own. In this case, the setting is Mercury; Edmond Hamilton

aptly described her version of it:

The Brackett Mercury, lacking the glamor of Venus and the haunting

sadness of ancient Mars--there is no history here, and no

beauty--has a certain harsh authority even so. Nature is the chief

villain, and a convincingly nasty one.... Leigh's concept of a

world where tremendous mountains went up literally beyond the sky,

where the cliff-locked valleys were racked by violent storms and

sudden rockfalls, and life was a precarious thing beset by heat and

cold, thirst and starvation, is a nice little view of hell.

Two paperback novels: Space Prison by Tom Godwin and Legacy by James

H. Schmitz

(Well, Legacy was posted back in May, so it's old news, but I expected

them to be posted at around the same time.)

Space Prison is about a group of humans stranded on a truly hostile

planet (not unlike Brackett's Mercury), with minimal resources and

nasty creatures. It follows a recurrent Godwin theme of solidarity

against a hostile universe.

I actually read Legacy a few years ago, well before becoming a DPer,

as part of a Schmitz kick after Baen put his works back in print (also

prompted by finding Guy Gordon's venerable Schmitz Encyclopedia

fansite in the early days of the Web, a bit before the reprints

started). What stands out in my memory is the characters, in

particular the protagonist Trigger Argee, who was in a few short

stories but really shines here.

As was common with paperbacks, both novels are retitled (the original

titles are The Survivors and A Tale of Two Clocks, respectively.)

Another thing the books have in common is that the folks over at Baen

are fond of them, so that not only have they put those books in print,

but unbeknownst to me when I started working at them, they were both

online in their entirety at the Baen website; here are links to the

Baen version of Space Prison (where it has the original title The

Survivors) and Legacy. But at least those versions don't have the

original front/back cover and blurbs, like this one has.