Slashdot Mirror

Someone else already mentioned the MobiPocket Reader, which includes some phenomenal high-res fonts for the Clié. Baen Books has much of their catalogue available for download in the MobiPocket format, including their Baen Free Library. The Free Library contains dozens of books, many by established authors. That includes the first couple of books in the Honor Harrington series.

Beyond that, I like the Weasel Reader, an ebook reader dedicated to reading Project Gutenberg etexts.

Both MobiPocket Reader and Weasel Reader support the jogwheel, Memory Stick, and hi-res fonts on the Clié. Highly recommended.

Someone else already mentioned the MobiPocket Reader, which includes some phenomenal high-res fonts for the Clié. Baen Books has much of their catalogue available for download in the MobiPocket format, including their Baen Free Library. The Free Library contains dozens of books, many by established authors. That includes the first couple of books in the Honor Harrington series.

Beyond that, I like the Weasel Reader, an ebook reader dedicated to reading Project Gutenberg etexts.

Both MobiPocket Reader and Weasel Reader support the jogwheel, Memory Stick, and hi-res fonts on the Clié. Highly recommended.

One of my favorite uses for the Palm Pilot is reading. For example, if you go to Baen.com you'll see many popular books for download FREE! And if you like the free ones, you can pay for electronic copies of later ones in the series. For example, I loved the Honor Harrington "On Basilisk Station", so I started buying the books. Soon I found it easier to buy the electronic versions and read those on my CLIE. Baen even included a CD with the latest Honor book that contains EVERY HONOR BOOK EVER MADE in electronic form! Combine that with the low price of electronic books bought online (4-5 dollars per) and you have convienence at its finest.

One book in a month of nothing to do? Maybe one book a week, if you're slow!

Anyways, Cryptonomicon was a good read, if a little lengthy. In fact, anything by Stephenson that you haven't read (Zodiac and Diamond Age were great). Just ignore the complaints about endings and enjoy the rest of the story.

Asimov's Foundation series is a great choice as well. Not so much with the hacker angle (well, hacking of a different kind, surely) but very interesting.

If you want to go military geek sci-fi, David Weber's Honor Harrington series is excellent. You can get the first book, On Basilisk Station from the Baen Free Library. And if you buy the most recent book, War of Honor, in hardcover, you get a CD that has all the books in the series on it. Or you can just download the CD somewhere online.

Just a few suggestions. I have a ton of other things on my reading list, but that's a start.

-Todd

You CANNOT compete with someone taking YOUR PRODUCT and giving it away for free.

These guys think they can make a good living by giving away THEIR OWN PRODUCT for free, AND by allowing people to give it to others as well. As it turns out, they're doing very well at it, too.

Actually, there is a book over in Baen's free (as in beer) online library of some of their titles that has these (Bats, Rats, and Vats - I forget the author). Modified bats as well. Pretty good read, as is a lot of other stuff on that site, including some very "known" authors.

"With online sites such as the Baen Free Library (Link: http://www.baen.com/library/) or MP3.com as well as online projects such as the Linux operating system showing that unrestricted distrobution of a work does not always diminish the monetary value and may instead increase that value, has the legal definition of copyright become outdated? If so, what would you see it redefined as and if not, what do you see as keeping copyright relevant to the digital era?"

In other words: Lessig, explain to me what you really think about copyright and Matt, don't just give me your organization's standard rhetoric, please try to find a convincing argument for once.

It's stealing the recipe to make and sell your own bread.

Now your analogy assumes that published recipes can be "stolen". When defining copyright's morality through analogy, you can't appeal to copyright without reasoning in circles.

If you want to sell bread, come up with your own recipe.

Then what if it turns out that the most basic recipe for bread itself is copyrighted? Then nobody can make bread at all.

Check out one of his short stories Melancholy Elephants.

"Melancholy Elephants."

There exists a real need for moving some of the bits I see on my CRT (actually, 3 20" CRTs as one virtual desktop, but I digress 8-) a few meters over, in a form factor appropriate to the venue.

Specifically, I'm talking about moving some of the bits described in this article, like those you can find here , onto digital paper so that I can then wander over to my lavish master bathroom, where I'd like to then peruse same either sitting on the porcelain throne or wallowing in the hot jacuzzi in close proximity.

A laptop/pda does not (IMHO) fit the bill here - but a (preferably steamproof 8-) 'digital' paperback (uploadable via a USB socket in the spine, perhaps) would certainly be welcome. At the cost of a half-dozen paperback novels (~US$50) I think they'd sell a boatload of the things... I'd buy one!

Have fun!

OldFart 8-)

Is not! Is so! IS NOT! IS SO!

If you're going to argue this point, you need to do better than reference a couple of the greatest SF books of all time; by their nature, they are exceptions. You're going to need numbers that give us the longevity of the typical work, not the exceptional one.

My numbers:
In 1930, 10,027 books were published. Today, 174 of those books are still in print. Source: a Red Herring article on copyright

The other 9,853 books are not deemed worth the cost of keeping in print, or the rights owner has died and no one knows who has the power to grant permission, or a thousand different reasons, all of which keep the work "frozen", even if someone wants to do something with it as a labor of love, or perhaps in a niche market that doesn't interest the rights holder.

Keep in mind that, for the vast majority of works, the slope of the sales curve is initially very steep; 80% of a typical paperback title's copies are sold in the first 3 months (source). Or consider music; for the last few years there have been about 25,000 to 35,000 new titles released each year, of these about 7,000 are released on major labels, and of those only about 10% are profitable (source). We can safely assume that the unprofitable titles go out of print. A small percentage are re-issued by indie labels, but again, the majority of titles end up in the vault, waiting for copyright to expire, useful to no one.

An even better idea is the Baen Free Library

It makes much more sense to put older works out there for everyone at no charge in order to generate interest in newer works. And it's been working just like that for Baen. I know that I've bought quite a few books from various Baen authors after reading some of their work through the Free Library.

Nope, this colour has nothing in common with peas whirled or otherwise. It's more like violets or the original colour of Iris Flowers as painted by Vincent Van Gogh, which probably all look like whirled peas to you anyway.

Now combine that happy shade of purple with the glow of a neon sign...I hate to think what it looks like on a mac which tends to intensify colours that look ok on a PC

The Unreal thing uses a fair bit of this colour too.

OK now for the very original plot:
[* As John Dalton, an ex-Marine assigned to patrol the edge of human space... Unhappy patrolling the ass-end of nowhere...

Violent turmoil has errupted on your watch *]

Does this feel like David Weber "On Basilisk Station" to anyone? and his stuff was loosely based on the Hornblower series by CS Forrester (written before "Hornblower" developped new meaning)

Well I guess this the version for people who want more than just a book.

Of course I live in the arse-end of nowhere so I guess I'd better start preparing for action.

Yes, free prequels sell the new books, but the basis of these sales is the fact that Baen picks great authors. The free ebooks generate exposure, but if the books sucked, nobody would buy the new books no matter how much exposure it gets. Witness the music industry -- how many of us have bought the latest Britney Spears or Celine Dion trash? That crap gets way more exposure than a few Baen ebooks, but if it's crap, then nobody will buy it anyways. (If you happen to _like_ those singers, well, flame away ;-). Heck why even bother pirating crap like that? BTW, if you haven't yet, read the articles from Baen author Eric Flint regarding the free library and how he came up with the idea, as well as the remifications on his royalties from his books: http://www.baen.com/library/palaver_index.htm

6. Monitor class from "In Death Ground..." book duo-logy. My god, if you're tired of the wimpy battles in Star Trek and Star Wars and on TV..., not to mention the ferocious "game over, man!" ass-kicking humanity & friends receive for the first half of the series...

Doulogy? Oh no You need to read Insurrection, the published-earlier/set-later Starfire quadrology novel. It's the Americal Revolution playing out between the Core and Rim systems within the Terran Ferderation a generation later. Great stuff.

If anyone's interested, I have the first CD Baen Books put out with David Weber's War of Honor up on a BT torrent. It's not an ISO image, though, it's a zipped copy of all the files.

The .torrent file is available for download at http://www.liberty4me.com/tracker .

Cause he'd get really annoyed at the decendants of the Mutineers trying to poke him with a pin to see if there's anything good inside

You can read the details at their website, but what they did was allow authors to voluntarily put books in the "free library" and they seem to be happy with the results. Oddly enough, people read the free eBooks, and wind up either buying the paper copy or other books from the author once they determine they like it! Surprise, suprise... There's also a good article comparing what Baen is doing with the record industry also.

You can read the details at their website, but what they did was allow authors to voluntarily put books in the "free library" and they seem to be happy with the results. Oddly enough, people read the free eBooks, and wind up either buying the paper copy or other books from the author once they determine they like it! Surprise, suprise... There's also a good article comparing what Baen is doing with the record industry also.

The same applies to the music industry, book publishing, or any other intellecutal property enterprise. Keep that in mind next time you are firing up your P2P client and downloading the latest "free" software or music or whatever. Remember that your "free" software has a cost - rather than being measured in a few dollars out of your wallet, this cost is measured in people's jobs.

The music/movie industry would have us believe that free distribution = end of profit.

They would seem to disagree:

"Publishers and authors: listen up! We know you may be concerned about all this book-sharing talk, and what it might do to your sales. You may be surprised to know that we have many, many publishers and authors that are big BookCrossing fans. They've seen the paradoxical value in encouraging the sharing of books. In fact, if one were to compare the number of people who buy books based on seeing book reviews here as the books change hands, to the number of people who actually find free books, we can assure you there are far more buyers than finders. This site is not about saving people money. Many of our members, in fact, have started purchasing two copies of every book they pick out, so they can keep one and release the other into the wild! Here's a good forum discussion re: authors, book sales, and bookcrossing that should alleviate any concerns about lost sales."

He would seem to disagree as well.

More here.

True... none have anything to do with piracy, but it would appear that free does not necessitate loss.

The same applies to the music industry, book publishing, or any other intellecutal property enterprise. Keep that in mind next time you are firing up your P2P client and downloading the latest "free" software or music or whatever. Remember that your "free" software has a cost - rather than being measured in a few dollars out of your wallet, this cost is measured in people's jobs.

The music/movie industry would have us believe that free distribution = end of profit.

They would seem to disagree:

"Publishers and authors: listen up! We know you may be concerned about all this book-sharing talk, and what it might do to your sales. You may be surprised to know that we have many, many publishers and authors that are big BookCrossing fans. They've seen the paradoxical value in encouraging the sharing of books. In fact, if one were to compare the number of people who buy books based on seeing book reviews here as the books change hands, to the number of people who actually find free books, we can assure you there are far more buyers than finders. This site is not about saving people money. Many of our members, in fact, have started purchasing two copies of every book they pick out, so they can keep one and release the other into the wild! Here's a good forum discussion re: authors, book sales, and bookcrossing that should alleviate any concerns about lost sales."

He would seem to disagree as well.

More here.

True... none have anything to do with piracy, but it would appear that free does not necessitate loss.

Do you remember when Enterprise was first introduced? We were promised it would be "Star Trek with phasers". In other words, lots of action, less "character development" episodes and other slow topics.

That recent "Stigma" episode (T'Pol has mind-meld disease) was as far from "Star Trek with phasers" as you can get. On the other hand, that recent "Canamar" epsiode (Con Air, in space) was pretty cool.

Here is the best hope for the series: Berman and Pillar have stopped writing all the episodes. Every time I watch Enterprise, I make careful note of who wrote the episode. The whole first season was purely written by Berman and Pillar. Recently, we have had a string of episodes written by other writers.

If they want to make us happy, they ought to get some scripts from actual SF authors. How about John E. Stith, David Weber, or Catherine Asaro? (I draw the line at Piers Anthony, though...)

steveha

"And, just as important -- perhaps most important of all -- free books are the way an audience is built in the first place. How many people who are low on cash and for that reason depend on libraries or personal loans later rise on the economic ladder and then buy books by the very authors they came to love when they were borrowing books?

Practically every reader, that's who. Most readers of science fiction and fantasy develop that interest as teenagers, mainly from libraries. That was certainly true of me. As a teenager, I couldn't afford to buy the dozen or so Robert Heinlein novels I read in libraries. Nor could I afford the six-volume Lensmen series by "Doc" Smith. Nor could I afford any of the authors I became familiar with in those days: Arthur Clarke, James H. Schmitz, you name it.

Did they "lose sales?" In the long run, not hardly. Because in the decades which followed, I bought all of their books -- and usually, in fact, bought them over and over again to replace old copies which had gotten too worn and frayed. I just bought another copy of Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, in fact, because the one I had was getting too long in the tooth. I think that's the third copy of that novel I've purchased, over the course of my life. I'm not sure. Might be the fourth. I first read that book when I was fourteen years old -- forty years ago, now -- checked out from my high school library."

Author Eric Flint

I just finished the first two Honor Harrington ebooks from the Baen Free Library on my Palm VIIx. I find it to be very pleasant on the eyes, not so pleasant on the thumb (although that is a design defect of the VII series: a very stiff up/down rocker). The text flows very naturally and the whole package is smaller than a regular book. The only limitation is that you don't get the occasional graphics in there, but for most books that's not really a problem.

I've actually started to prefer reading books on the PDA. The text seems to flow better, the printing is never spotty, and it never uses a lousy font. Additionally, the palm has a backlight and Weasel reader is a fine piece of software. The only thing that might be cooler (although my Palm couldn't do this, but the Zarius might) is to hook up a good speech synthesis unit and have your ebook read to you while you drive or whatnot like some sort of computerized book on tape.

Janis Ian's experiences
Advice for the aspiring musician
Baen Free Library

Thanks for reminding of Joel Rosenberg and his excellent novels.

You're very welcome!

They are some of the best fantasy I have ever read.

Agreed. He has an amazing talent for characterization. (Not to mention storytelling.)

It's been far too long since I've read them.

You should go back and re-read them.. I did recently, and they still hold up. you can start with The Sleeping Dragon, which is available at the Baen Free Library. (The Sleeping Dragon, The Sword and the Chain, and The Silver Crown have been re-released in one volume, entitled "The Guardians of the Flame")

I'm sure I'm not the only slashdotter whose written games for personal amusement. Nor am I the only one whose distributed them to friends and gotten positive responces (I think honestly, but they might have just been being nice to me).

Now picture all those games coming unsorted through some sort of web portal. Combined with buggy games, games which only run on an SGI mainframe, games with trojan horses, over-used joke games (thermonuclearwar, the game that just pops up a dialog saying "You lose") and downright trolls (a game built around goatse.cx).

Now, I'm not saying publishers are the only way to strain this down to something acceptable. Gaming magazines can give reviews (though less than 1% of games would ever get reviewed at all); players would have favorite game authors; there could even be something like slashdot moderation (we all know how well that works -- actually, IMHO, it's one of the better forms I've seen).

I'm just saying that publishers can't just "get out of the way" -- they can only be replaced by something better.

A lot of the ideas here are based on an essay of Eric Flint's. He expounds in detail.

.sig: We go to war with Iraq to prevent them from building nukes and using them against us, destabilizing Pakistan, allowing Al-queada to get nukes, and use them against us -- oh the irony!

you mean something like this Melancholy Elephants

Of all your books, only Inferno seems to have been allowed to go out of print.

Why is that? Did the Vatican threaten you with excommunication? There seems to be plenty of demand for the book, because it's quite scarce in the out-of-print web sources, and consistently fetches a good price. So what's the story here?

Any chance of Inferno showing up at the Baen Free Library? BTW -- Thanks for allowing Fallen Angels to be placed there, even while it is still in print. Did its availability online have any impact on the print sales, pro or con?

What's your opinion on eBooks, today and in the near future?

You released one eBook for free (Fallen Angels) at Baen's free library. Fallen Angels was very amusing at points, but far below the quality of your other work, or Jerry's for that matter (I don't know much about Flynn). Did you guys choose to release that novel after it was written or before? Would you release another novel, either for free or for pay?

Privatizing manned space flight is our best hope for reducing costs and improving safety (look at how well it worked for manned heavier-than-air flight inside the atmosphere!) -- but how should one get the ball rolling? Several SSTO manned programs flourished in the heady investment-rich days of the .com bubble, but now that the economy is in the tank, it's pretty hard to get investment dollars for blue-sky (black-sky?) projects. The technology to build a new rocket is pretty straightforward these days, regardless of what folks would have you believe. After all, Sputnik flew nearly 50 years ago. At that time, television was the latest, greatest consumer technology. I'd like to think we've advanced a little since then.

I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences. Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:

The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:

1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.

3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.

4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.

5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.

That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

I had Newt Gingrich persuaded to do this before he found he couldn't keep the office of Speaker. I haven't had any audiences with his successors.

These links have been thrown around a lot on Slashdot already, but I think they deserve to be posted at least once in every story about books...

If you would like to read more free scifi e-books, the Baen Free Library is the place to start looking. I especially recommend David Weber's Harrington novels (the first two are available, and they weren't boring back then).

Then of course there is Project Gutenberg, which has most stuff worth reading up to circa 1920. Even more books are available on their distributed proofreading site, featured on Slashdot a while back.

Are there other, similar places where one can - legally! - find quality reading material?

I have nearly switched 100% to reading on my Sony Clie, and I prefer my trusty PDA for most reading tasks. For one thing you can fit a pile of books onto a 128M Media Stick. I also like being able to read in the dark, and I really like the fact that as long as I have my PDA I always have a book to read. I am convinced that for casual reading there is no better way to go than a PDA.

Computer documentation, on the other hand, is somewhat more difficult. I have several computer textbooks on my PDA including: "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," "The Emacs Lisp Manual," and "The Zope Book" to name a few. In fact, most everything available at the Linux Documentation Project is available in Plucker format. However, with computer text you generally have to be at least somewhat careful with line wrapping. A lisp function that looks fine formatted at 80 chars a line probably doesn't look so hot when you only have 40 characters per line, and if the book includes pictures then you are even worse off. PDA screens (at least Palm-based PDA screens) are still too narrow and offer too poor of a resolution for books with pictures or source code listings (IMHO).

Go to Baen's web site and download David Drake and Eric Flint's Belisaurius series and read that instead.

There's another article about this in Gamepro. A sharp-eyed Miyazaki fan noticed that Future Boy Conan, an early Miyazaki TV series, appears on one of the cards in one of the lower pictures.

Funny...in the Niven et al book Fallen Angels (the book that makes notable references to RMS), one of the methods used to get around the totalitarian anti-literature government is to retrofit regular gameboys to serve as covert e-book devices. Looks like life's imitating art.

Speaking of the iPod, I've heard a rumor that the next one will have sixty gigs of storage and a touch-sensitive screen, and be Apple's entry into the fully-functional PDA market. No idea if it's true, but it sure would be neat if it were.

That doesn't explain similar results for Baen authors who put their books out for free in anelectronic library.

I think we're starting to assemble enough data points to be able to say with some confidence, putting out free stuff helps sales of both the rest of the IP portfolio and sales of the free stuff as well.

This is what I buy on sight in hardcover:

1. Anything by Vernor Vinge. I heartily recommend The Peace Wars, Marooned in Realtime, and A Fire Upon the Deep. A Deepness in the Sky was very, very good, but I didn't like it quite as well as the three I've named. His short fiction collections are of variable quality, since what he's been writing lately is far better than what he wrote in the '60s.
2. Anything by Lois McMasters Bujold. Anything.
3. The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. The books are normally extremely funny and can be insightful. Unlike most long-running series, he's been getting better as he goes along, so start with something copyrighted after 1990.
4. J.K. Rowling writes the Harry Potter books. They're marketed as children's books, but I won't read my son some of the chapters before bedtime. Again, getting better over time.
5. David Weber writes far-future Horatio Hornblower books about Honor Harrington. I like them (although I'm not as fond of the latest one, War of Honor, as the first nine). I have read a few of his other books, and while they're not bad I haven't enjoyed them as much.

Baen Books has been providing some of their books as free downloads in several formats. This includes one Bujold and several of Weber's. There are other authors there, and it's a good way to get a taste for various authors. So, too, is the public library, if you have a good one near you.

You should also look at Baen's Free Library which has HTML and PDA-readable versions of quite a few books from various authors, many of them the first 1-2 books of a series so you can decide whether it's worth plunking down money for paper (or electronic, see Webscriptions on the same site) versions of the later books.

• Shards of Honor
  
• Barrayar
  
• Cordelia's Honor (has both Shards of Honor and Barrayar)
  
• The Warrior's Apprentice
  
• The Vor Game
  
• Young Miles (has Warrior's Apprentice, Mountains of Mourning and The Vor Game)
  
• Cetaganda
  
• Borders of Infinity
  
• Brothers in Arms
  
• Mirror Dance
  
• Miles Errant (has Borders of Infinity, Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance)
  
• Memory
  
• Komarr
  
• A Civil Campaign
  
• Diplomatic Immunity

I completely agree. She is incredible - just don't let the incredibly terrible book covers scare you off - some of the books in her series have covers that make it look like the book's gonna be some cheesy romance crap. They are not. Since this is a series, here's the list, in chronological order:

Shards of Honor
Barrayar
Cordelia's Honor (has both Shards of Honor and Barrayar)
The Warrior's Apprentice
The Vor Game
Young Miles (has Warrior's Apprentice, Mountains of Mourning and The Vor Game)
Cetaganda
Borders of Infinity
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Miles Errant (has Borders of Infinity, Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance)
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
Diplomatic Immunity

Pick up Cordelia's Honor and give it a chance. You won't regret it.

If you read her freebee at Mountains of Mourning just remember that this story happens about 20 years after Cordelia's Honor.

Another great author is Vernor Vinge. He's a computer scientist - Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are his big ones - they're also awesome, but more technical and WILDLY imaginative.

I completely agree. She is incredible - just don't let the incredibly terrible book covers scare you off - some of the books in her series have covers that make it look like the book's gonna be some cheesy romance crap. They are not. Since this is a series, here's the list, in chronological order:

Shards of Honor
Barrayar
Cordelia's Honor (has both Shards of Honor and Barrayar)
The Warrior's Apprentice
The Vor Game
Young Miles (has Warrior's Apprentice, Mountains of Mourning and The Vor Game)
Cetaganda
Borders of Infinity
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Miles Errant (has Borders of Infinity, Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance)
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
Diplomatic Immunity

Pick up Cordelia's Honor and give it a chance. You won't regret it.

If you read her freebee at Mountains of Mourning just remember that this story happens about 20 years after Cordelia's Honor.

Another great author is Vernor Vinge. He's a computer scientist - Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are his big ones - they're also awesome, but more technical and WILDLY imaginative.

I wouldn't call the Honor books deep, but they're very fun to read. If you buy the hardcover edition of the 10th book in the series, War of Honor, it includes a CD-ROM with all of the books in the series in HTML, RTF, MS Reader, etc. formats, plus artwork, covers, schematics, other books in other series, and some other stuff. The publishers, Baen Books, are so generous that it says right on the CD that the contents can be freely distributed but not sold. You can download the first three books of the series for free from their Web site, Baen Books . If you hunt around you can probably find all of the Honorverse books online somewhere for download.

Arrgh. Wrong link. The above link points to the Baen page on Bujold; here is the correct link to the Baen Free Library page for Bujold, with "The Mountains of Mourning".

http://www.baen.com/library/lmbujold.htm

steveha

• Jonathan Lethem: best known so far for Motherless Brooklyn, he goes off the deep end with As She Climbed Across The Table.. Girl in Landscape is also pretty good imho. He kinda strikes me as a bit Vonnegutian, and I like to support NYC writers, particularly those in the outer boroughs ;)
  
• John Case: Thrillers with some techy edge to them, particularly The Genesis Code. I just finished The Eighth Day, not bad..
  
• Iain Banks: The Business is pretty sweet. Not as 'provocative' about globalization as some might say, but fun just the same, with strange life moments that felt pretty real.
  
• Neil Gaiman: American Gods feels a bit like Small Gods whipped up with a bit of Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, but naughtier and better.
  
• Terry Pratchett: the newest (Night Watch) is darker than usual, but I think it actually works well that way.
  
• Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad is a favorite
  
• Donald Westlake: The Ax is recommended to those of you fellow overqualified unemployed folks out there, but only if you have a black sense of humor.
  
• James Morrow's Towing Jehovah is a real trip: imagine that God is dead, falls from heaven, and needs to be towed to His final resting place in the Arctic..
  
• Vernor Vinge for old-skool space opera: A Fire Upon The Deep and (what I'm currently reading) A Deepness In The Sky
  
• Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the story of two Jewish kids revolutionizing pulp comics.
  
• Eric Flint's 1632. If you're looking for good pulp SF, I'd also recommend checking Baen titles, and perusing their free library.
  

How about Joel Rosenberg?

His first book (The Sleeping Dragon) is now available at the Baen free library!

Another favourite is Sherry S. Tepper. In particular, Grass, Raising the Stones, and Sideshow - they form a (very loose) trilogy, but aren't sold as such. Although set in the future, with space travel, etc, these books are more social than science fiction. They tend to have a bit of a "feminist" bent, but are riveting nonetheless.

There are a few books by Weber, Drake, and Flint at the Baen Free Library.

I really enjoyed Old Nathan by David Drake, but YMMV.

There are a few books by Weber, Drake, and Flint at the Baen Free Library.

I really enjoyed Old Nathan by David Drake, but YMMV.

Yes. This series starts out good, then it gets better, and recent books have been awesome. She has several Hugo and Nebula awards.

You can get a taste of her work for free from the Baen Free Library. Her novella "The Mountains of Mourning", which won both a Hugo and a Nebula, is available there. It is an early Miles Vorkosigan story.

http://www.baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=lmbu jold

steveha

I second some of these suggestions.

David Weber's work is excellent. The Honor Harrington books are my current favorite. The Mutineer's Moon books are fun, but a little silly. (In two books the protagonist goes from an Earth astronaut to an interstellar emperor going around blowing up stars.)

Steve White's books are also very good, and Eric Flint's 1632 is an entertaining time-travel story. (A small modern town finds itself dropped into the middle of 1632 Europe.)

Some of these are available for free download (either in their entirety, or the first third or half of the book to get you hooked) from the Baen Books web site.