A Tip and Story Share
As you may have noticed by the novels, short stories, resource materials, and authors I have shared in previous newsletters, I often read historical fiction and nonfiction. In this case, by “historical,” I mean published in the past. My primary free source for these stories is Project Gutenberg. I’ve linked to works on Project Gutenberg before, but never explained the site and what it offers. I’ve also recently discovered a similar source for free audiobooks, Librivox.
Services like Project Gutenberg and Librivox publish works that are in the public domain, making them more widely available. More about each site in a bit, but first a few notes about the public domain.
What is the Public Domain?
The term “public domain” indicates creative works that are available for use by the general public without paying a license fee. Each country has different rules on what is included in the public domain, and within a country, those rules have changed over time. Since I am located in the US, my comments here are related to public domain in the US. Other countries may be more or less restrictive.
Some works are released into the public domain on creation and others enter the public domain when the license holder releases the license. These are uncommon cases, but do happen. The most common way a work enters the public domain is through expiration of the license. Currently, in the US, this is 95 years after original publication. All works within that year enter the public domain on January 1. So, on January 1 of this year, all works published in the US in 1927 or earlier entered the public domain.
What is in the Public Domain for you?
The release of a work into the public domain is often the reason why you see a slew of new novels, TV series, movies, etc. based on the same work released back to back. For example, the expiration of licenses for classic stories by H. P. Lovecraft and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has resulted in many of those stories and their characters (like Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu) getting new attention. And there will be more in the coming years.
In addition to the many stories from the exciting years of fantasy horror fiction in the public domain (or soon will be), there are many works that may be interesting to you. Other authors who are likely of interest include fantasy and science fiction authors Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Murray Leinster, L. Frank Baum (Oz), Lord, Philip K. Dick, and classic authors H. G. Wells, Lord Dunsany, Jules Verne, and Sir Thomas Mallory. And many more.
Project Gutenberg and Librivox
From the Project Gutenberg site: “Project Gutenberg is a library of over 70,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world’s great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for you to enjoy.”
It is easy to search for a specific work or author on Project Gutenberg and they also have the handy concept of “shelves.” Like hitting your favorite shelf in the library, you can click on a shelf to see what is available on that topic on in that genre. With over 1000 titles, the science fiction shelf is one of the largest collections on the site.
Librivox has a similar mission to Project Gutenberg, but for audiobooks. It hasn’t been around as long and doesn’t have shelves, but has loads of content that is easily found with a title or author search. If you are accustomed to the high quality recordings on Audible or other paid services, it’s important for me to note that narrators for Librivox do not audition. The site’s intent is to provide the most content possible using many voices. They have production standards that are close to the paid services, but most of the narrators are not professional voice actors and don’t have professional recording equipment.
I have recently recorded fiction and nonfiction content for Librivox, from the short story Third Planet by Murray Leinster to Scientific American articles from the 1880s. I’m looking forward to contributing to recording more classic science fiction and fantasy.