Wednesday 20 February 2002

A few more e-books

As long-time readers will know, I have a pocket PC from Casio, named Cassiopeia E-125, or Cassie for short. Cassie and I are almost inseparable. She was with me to the hospital this winter. It was my sheer good luck that I had recently downloaded an e-book then, and not yet got around to finish it.

Yes, e-books is one of the main reasons why I bought a pocket PC in the first place. Oh, I can write short texts on it, but it is not nearly as well suited for writing as for reading. In fact, I find it more convenient for reading than a traditional paper book. And not least important, I no longer have to stack these books in an already full apartment. A small library will fit on a zip disk. But I have announced the virtues of e-books before. Let us see what I have read recently.

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My e-book pusher of choice is http://www.fictionwise.com/ and this time all the titles are from them. There is always a wide range of books there; they are strongest on science fiction and rather weak on the mainstream contemporary novels, but there are actually romance novels and horror and the occasional non-fiction book too.

Among the more famous SF authors they are publishing is Robert Silverberg, and his work Trips is quite well suited for this medium. It is too short to be a full-scale novel but too long to be a short story. On Fictionwise, you generally pay for what you get. You can buy your short stories one by one rather than having to buy a whole magazine or antology. Or you can buy novels. Or anything in between.

Trips is a Slider type story. I love those and have done so since I was a boy and read one such story by one or both of the Norwegian SF authors Bing & Bringsværd. I was captured by the concept of parallel universes, each slightly different from the next, and started to use this in my own fiction almost immediately. I have never really stopped. Anyway, Silverberg does not try to give any scientific explanation for his character's ability to shift between realities. It is implied that it is a gift bestowed on him, or perhaps bought in some obscure way, from a more advanced race. It is implied that some universes know about such travellers and others don't. This is not the focus. The focus is the main person's search for himself in the other worlds, and above all, his search for his wife. Which is the more strange as he actually left his wife to go on this adventure.

If you like Silverberg, or Slider stories, you will probably like this one. It is OK, I guess. I might have done without the mandatory sex parts. But all in all, not bad.

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I was a Teenage Superhero by Sherwood Smith: Targeted at young readers, this one is slightly predictable but a lighthearted and fun read. It is a short story, really. Despite no hints in the title, the main character is a girl and the story has a slightly girlish feel to it. It has a kind of ending, though not very surprising, and it ends in a very open way; as if inviting you to continue in your own fantasy.

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Sorry, the warranty on my right hand just expired. I cannot write anymore, it hurts too much. Later, I suppose.