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

Science Fiction

13740 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 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Tenthrow
18
Looking for a good Sci Fi Novel available on Project Gutenberg (self.sciencefiction)
submitted 2 years 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
[–] TheMissingBit 4 points 2 years ago

I would suggest looking for books on Standard Ebooks as well. They take transcribed books from Project Gutenberg and other similar sites and format them to display very nicely on ebook readers.

Project Gutenberg is great, but their focus is more on reproducing a printed product whereas StandardEbooks is focused on producing ebooks that are pleasant to read.