Creative Commons » Science Fiction

Amazon #1 Bestseller, “Machine of Death,” goes Creative Commons

Jane Park — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:16:21 +0000

It’s happened before with music albums, where releasing work openly online did not hurt actual sales of the product. The authors of Machine of Death clearly get this. They explain why the science fiction anthology of stories about people who know the manner by which they die (but have no idea when), has been made available online under CC BY-NC-ND:

Why are we doing this? Aren’t we worried about hurting our book sales?

In a word: no. You have proven time and again that you are willing to pay for content that you find valuable. You have shown that you are driven to share material that you fall in love with. And we are committed to ensuring that you can experience our work whether you can afford to buy a book or not; whether you live in a country that Amazon ships to or not; whether you have space in your life for a stack of paper or not.

Please, download, read, share and enjoy!

In addition, some of the individual stories are released under the CC BY-NC-SA license, which allows you to translate and adapt the work as long as you abide by the noncommercial condition and release the derivative under the same license. Podcasts are also being created for all the stories, with three stories up so far.

As of right now, Machine of Death is the #1 bestselling science fiction anthology on Amazon, and has also made their Best Books of 2010 list. For more information, see Boing Boing and the Machine of Death website.

Cory Doctorow’s “For The Win”

Jane Park — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:52:33 +0000

Longtime supporter of CC and NYTimes best selling author Cory Doctorow has released his latest work of fiction, For The Win, under a CC BY-NC-SA license. For The Win is about a virtual future of gamers, Big Sister, and shadow economies. Cory encourages you to remix the work and also to convert it to your favorite format. You can download the book for free, donate, or buy the book at his site.

His last book, Little Brother, was available for download under the same license and spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. For more on why Cory uses CC for his works, see his posts for Locus Magazine on Creative Commons and Why I Copyfight.

Jonathan Lethem’s CC Licensed Philip K. Dick Essay

Fred Benenson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:36:58 +0000

Notable Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn, You Don’t Love Me Yet among others) just released an essay titled “Crazy Friend” (PDF download) under a CC BY-NC-ND license. The story is a fantastic read in and of itself, but we’re doubly excited that its CC licensed.

Here’s io9′s summary:

The essay, called “Crazy Friend,” is a winding, mildly obsessive tale of how Dick’s stories guided Lethem out of childhood, into a turbulent adolescence, and at last settled him in a career as a critically-acclaimed writer. He begins by talking about his boyhood relationship with two cool older girls who didn’t get why he thought Dick’s writing was so important, and ends by introducing us to Lethem’s life as a Dick fanboy and showing us snippets of his early writing about Dick (some interesting stuff). Ultimately, Lethem says, Dick is the archetypal “crazy friend” whom we’ve all known. And whom we all love.

Lethem has a new book coming out on October 13th called Chronic City and he’ll be doing an epic reading of the entire book around NYC city book stores starting October 16th.