Free New Books

Issue One of Warren Ellis’ new opus is available to read in full online

This is a bit hard on my eyes with the pages of the comic, but still, it’s a good intro. Here’s the blurb for Fell:

Detective Richard Fell is transferred over the bridge from the big city to Snowtown, a feral district whose police roster numbers three-and-a-half people (one detective has no legs). Dumped in this collapsing urban trashzone, Richard Fell is starting all over again. In a place where nothing seems to make any sense, Fell clings to the one thing he knows to be true: Everybody’s hiding something. Even him.

And here’s the link to read Issue One of Fell online at Newsarama.

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The Coming Age Of Systems And Machines Inspired By Living Things

This is a bit of a weird one. It’s the classic publisher trick of trying to something progressive and just getting it wrong. The complete text of Robert Franay’s new book is online - but you have to get it delivered to you piece by piece by email or RSS. So basically the book is being broken up into blog sized chunks. I can’t think of anything more irritating, to be honest, but those with patience could wait til all the emails arrive and then read the book from start to finish.

Here’s how Franay describes his book:

My aim in this book is to advance a view of the world that in some ways makes our complicated lives simple again. I believe this will come not just from Arcadian machines that work like living things but also from the rise of a culture that integrates the larger dynamics of life�??a culture that evolves. How long this can last, and where it will take us, are questions for the ages. I�??d argue that if the ultimate end of life on earth is not knowable to us, one thing we can know and trust is ecological process�??if we understand it well, and if we create a world that works within it. This would free human culture to evolve toward a future that is advanced and sophisticated beyond our imagining, while becoming at the same time an entirely new expression of that bucolic ideal we see now as no more than an ancient dream.

Visit PulseTheBook.com for email and RSS downloads of the books

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Savvy writer gives entire first novel away for free using MySpace to find interested readers. Nice.

This is the press release for Thomas Dowler’s debut novel, which does a good job of explaining why MySpace is a godsend for writers, just as it was for bands. Anyone can stick a book on their website - the trick is finding interested people to actually download it.

Mr Nice Guy is available as a free e-Book and audiobook podcast from www.mrniceguy-novel.com, and has been downloaded more than 2000 times in the thirteen weeks since its launch. Dowler credits social networking site MySpace for much of this success.

MySpace is famous for launching the career of bands like the Arctic Monkeys, but Dowler believes he is the first novelist to use the site to gain exposure for his work.

Thomas Dowler comments: �MySpace gave me instant access to millions of people, and I could search through them by age, gender and location, making it very easy to zoom right in on my target demographic. And because the novel is aimed at young, internet-savvy professionals � in other words the sort of people who use MySpace � a high proportion of the people I contacted were very interested by the concept.�

Mr Nice Guy, a romantic comedy in the British tradition, was submitted to literary agents throughout 2005, many of whom responded extremely positively, but felt unable to represent the book because of poor market conditions. One agent described it as �genuinely funny�, before adding that �no-one�s buying first novels at the moment�.

Dowler was so impressed by the response to the website (www.mrniceguy-novel.com) and his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/mrniceguy_novel), that he plans to publish his second novel, Jealous Guy, online in 2007.

Mr Nice Guy is the story of Dan Fisher, aspiring stand-up comedian and all-round good guy, who gets dumped by his girlfriend Claudia for being “too nice”.

Dan is forced to reassess his life, and his long-held belief that being “nice” was generally considered a good thing. His eccentric flatmate Giles and flamboyant boss Darren help Dan understand that what women really want is someone a bit dangerous. Someone James Dean-esque.

But when Dan meets Rachel, and her arrogant, possessive boyfriend Warren, Dan starts to realise that maybe he was right all along, and there’s nothing wrong with being a nice guy.

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“How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”

This is the book that underpins the philosophy of why giving away your entire book for free on the Net is a good thing. The website is a model every other writer should follow to promote their own book - clean, simple, and with the book available in a variety of electronic formats.

That aside, it’s also an important book whichever way you read it, because it recognises the lockdown of our supposedly ever more free culture. Here’s the book blurb:

Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can�t do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What�s at stake is our freedom�freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine.

Visit Lessig’s site to download Free Culture

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The definitive reference for making sure you’re using English correctly - first published on the Web and then turned into a bestselling book

Another website that spawned a book, Paul Brians’ Common Errors In English Usage is a vital and hugely entertaining encyclopaedia of, erm, common errors in English usage. It’s a great demonstration of how fluid the English language and how swiftly it changes - and it’s an essential reference tool for anyone who cares about being accurate in their use of English too.

The complete list of errors is here but it’s worth reading Brians’ notes about what constitutes an error and his methods used in compiling the book first.

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A new free downloadable essay examines the similarities between two of the world’s most powerful leaders

The first of Soft Skull Publishers‘ new iPamphlet range - free, downloadable essays - “Bush and Putin as Leaders” examines how Bush and Putin both look into each others’ souls and see kindred spirits, and kindred operators…

The actions of the Bush Administration point to a great irony. Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, America and Russia are undergoing a form of convergence of sorts. However, rather than Russia adopting liberal democracy and a market economy, as so many had predicted, the United States may be moving closer to a more traditionally Russian notion of managed democracy, in which executive authority reigns and the rights of citizens take a back seat to the needs of the state…

Each had his “Top Gun” moment before an adoring national press. Bush “helped” fly an S-3B Viking to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 to make a speech declaring the “end” to major military combat in Iraq. Three years earlier, and less than a month before his first presidential election, then acting President Putin co-piloted an Su-27 from Krasnodar to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. The media images of the two presidents, resplendent in their flight suits, are remarkably similar. Both leaders are extremely secretive and rely on inner circles to guide them. Both demand total loyalty and can be brutal to those who cross them. Both are also inclined to attack the news media, which they see as irritants at best.

You can read more and download the essay here

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This is a glorious compendium of arcane computer jargon, now in its third edition in print but continually updated online.

Indeed, The Jargon File website is the real home of the Hacker Dictionary, from which the book is merely a spin off. Here’s one of my favourite entries from the Dictionary, which gives a good flavour for why anyone should go rooting around in its pages:

cargo cult programming: n.

A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming).

The term �??cargo cult�?? is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman’s characterization of certain practices as �??cargo cult science�?� in his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).

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The preview issue of How Loathsome, a critically acclaimed graphic novel which explores gender experimentation and sexuality is free to read online.

Here’s the blurb from Publisher’s Weekly: “An androgynous figure, wearing nothing but black PVC pants, dominates this book�??s cover. It�??s an appropriate introduction to a story that explores gender experimentation. At an s&m party, Catherine meets Chloe, a “tall and immaculate” transvestite. The narration is entertainingly self-loathing, as when Catherine tells readers, “I wondered how to put her at ease, how not to come off as the person I was.” With Chloe, Catherine sees herself as part of a pair of “outcast aliens… beautiful monsters.” The four stories in this book explore various aspects of San Francisco�??s queer, transgendered subculture as the characters drift in and out of a world of drugs and broken romances. The spare, angular style of Naifeh (Courtney Crumrin) makes the characters look inhumanly glamorous, capturing the cast as the freaks they not only think themselves to be, but pride themselves on being. But Crane�??s sympathetic script puts this defiance in the context of the universal search for love and self-acceptance. Deep black and sepia pages alternate with gray-toned fairy horror stories, flashbacks and dream sequences to provide insight into a world of fetishes and addictions, appearance and identity. Like the best stories, these put readers inside the head of someone they might otherwise never know.”

Read the preview issue online here

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Australia�??s Great Barrier Reef is the biggest reef in the world and a scuba diving mecca. DiveAdvisory.org have prepared a 70 page book about the Barrier Reef�??s many attractions - and it�??s absolutely free

You�??d normally pay $US 20 and up for a guide book to Australia�??s Great Barrier Reef, but DiveAdvisory.org have been giving away a 71 page book on the GBR for free from their website. It�??s a download rather than a physical book, but as it�??s all done in PDF format it looks like a book with lots of colour photos and a host of information about the diving the reef and what to expect to see there. Their blurb says:

�??Our e-book provides useful and practical information about all aspects of scuba diving holidays on the Great Barrier Reef, including: PADI certifications, dive holiday options, dive courses, dive safety, dive insurance, DAN, accommodation, general tourist attractions and how to save money without sacrificing quality.

All of this is combined with operator listings, full colour photos, maps and a marine identification guide.�?�

For free, you really can�??t go wrong. This is a great resource for finding out more about the Barrier Reef and deciding where to dive along its vast length. Grab it before it disappears off their site! [Crossposted from my scuba diving site Divehappy.com]

Link to download page

Bestselling marketing author Seth Godin gave away this ebook for free for a limited time. You can still download a copy for yourself.

The pithy blurb: “There’s never been a better time to start a business with no money. This manifesto will show you how.”

Link to download page

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