Spontaneous Derivation

Over at his inestimable Whatever, John Scalzi has been reposting some of his old posts from up to a decade ago.

One of them, from December 2, 2005: How to Tell SF from F. That’s the “reprint” version in 2008; for a comparison of comment threads, here’s the original 2005 edition.

My contribution to the 2008 thread was this:

It’s actually a bit amusing to read the later Pratchett books, which actually seem to fall under medieval science fiction, just with trolls and dwarves as, essentially, alien races that live alongside the humans. Their cultures are real and don’t come from magic stuff apart from what appears in science fiction (i.e., trolls as creatures made from rocks. SF has silicon critters. Whatever).

There is magic, but nowadays it’s treated more or less as different physics, in a scientific way. And there are things like dimension bending and time travel, and usually they just happen—but there’s SF where such things just happen too. I don’t really see where waving hands about tachyons makes much of a difference versus a world where the same phenomenon is understood as magic.

In other words, Discworld is science fiction.

And because this is a blog about Kindle ebooks, here’s a list of Discworld books that underline this point. (All Discworld books are available on Kindle, by the way.)

Some of these themes are repeated in other books to smaller extent; those books are not included here.

The Science Fiction of Discworld

Note: Not in chronological order.

And also, not to make too a fine point of it: Nation is almost here! Yes it is! You can pre-order the Kindle book too!

Nation by Terry Pratchett

Buy: 9.99

Available for Pre-order.

Auto-delivered to the Kindle on September 30th.

I didn’t know MSNBC had a blog called Cosmic Log, with Alan Boyle covering cool science and technology. That’s pretty neat. Plus he’s totally an SF geek.

With the Large Hadron Collider brought online, Cosmic Log has a post about it, including a list of books about “the fictional frontier of particle physics”. Despite many of the books being older (indeed, Cosmic Log has a Used-Book Club), most of them are on the Kindle¹ , which says a lot about publishers bringing up their older books online behind the scenes. The only ones not available are Cosm and Timescape, both by Gregory Benford.

Here’s the list of the others, complete with links, for those interested:

1. Which usually means they’ll also be available in the Mobipocket store, and possibly other places—though it’s hard to beat the Kindle bookstore for selection these days. [↩]

On Tor.com, Jo Walton’s re-reading series has been a blast, revisiting older science fiction and fantasy literature with a practiced eye.

Here she talks about Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed:

The Dispossessed has the subtitle “an ambiguous utopia” and I think its strength lies in Le Guin’s clear-eyed acknowledgment of that ambiguity.

[continued]

The Dispossessed is available in the Kindle store.

But what about her other works, like Left Hand of Darkness, also set in the same “Hainish” universe, or the Earthsea series?

As of this writing, unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of Le Guin in the Kindle store. These days, new books are more and more often released side by side with the Kindle edition. Somewhat older books are slowly migrating onto the Kindle, and none of Le Guin’s have yet expired copyright, so you won’t find her stuff through Feedbooks or ManyBooks.net.

But here’s what you will find in the Kindle store (and yes, along with the Fictionwise and Mobipocket stores):

• The Dispossessed, discussed by Jo Walton above.

• The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, a collection of stories set in the same world as The Dispossessed, including the following:

  • “Coming of Age in Carhide”
  • “The Matter of Seggri”
  • “Unchosen Love”
  • “Mountain Ways”
  • “Solitude”
  • “Old Music and the Slave Woman”
  • “The Birthday of the World”
  • “Paradise Lost”

• Selected Stories of H.G. Wells, where Le Guin guides us through some of Wells’ greatest stories with deep and excellent commentary.

• “The Bones of the Earth”, a short story about the Earthsea wizard Ged, a Hugo Award nominee in the past.

• “The New Atlantis”, a short story about Atlantis re-rising in a future ruined ecology; Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominee, and Locus Award Winner.

• “The Shobies’ Story”, a short story set in the “Hainish” world; Locus Award and Nebula Award nominee.

• “The Diary of the Rose”, a short story with telepathic psychotherapists; Locus Award and Hugo Award nominee.

• “The Day Before the Revolution”, a short story directly related to The Dispossessed; Nebula Award and Locus Award winner, Hugo nominee.

• “Vaster than Empires and More Slow”, another short story in the Hainish universe; Locus and Hugo nominee