freeebooks

A semi-regular shout-out from me about the brilliant Standard Ebooks (@standardebooks) the "volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost."

Their books really are a joy to read.

https://standardebooks.org/

#Ebooks #StandardEbooks #FreeEbooks #CopyrightFreeEbooks #DRMFree

Wonderful to see that a Standard Ebooks edition of Mary Butts’ brilliant but somewhat neglected modernist novel Armed With Madness has been released today.

#MaryButts #ArmedWithMadness #Modernism #ModernistLiterature #StandardEbooks #Ebooks #FreeEbooks #Bookstodon @bookstodon

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/mary-butts/armed-with-madness

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "Wasp" (1957) by Eric Frank Russell

Age Range: 15 to adult
Genre: Science Fiction

Here's my hundredth daily book recommendation! And it's one of my favorites. "Wasp" is a classic: a story of a saboteur in an interstellar war. It's the closest thing you'll ever find to a practical manual on terrorism and sabotage in a science fiction novel.

James Mowry is an ordinary citizen of Earth when he's brought in to a mysterious government office. There's an interstellar war going on against an alien (but someone humanoid) species, but that's not a major factor in his life. By the time he leaves it, he's no longer an ordinary citizen; he's something else entirely.

[Mowry glanced at them. They were typescript copies of press reports. Settling back in his chair he perused them slowly and with care. The first told of a prankster in Roumania.

This fellow had done nothing more than stand in the road gazing fascinatedly at the sky, occasionally uttering ejaculations and loud phrases such as, "Blue flames!' Curious people had joined him and gaped likewise. The group became a crowd, the crowd became a mob, and the bigger the mob the faster it grew. Soon the audience blocked the street, overflowed into side-streets. Police tried to break it up, making matters worse. Some fool summoned the fire squads. Hysterics on the fringes swore they could see or had seen something weird above the clouds. Reporters and cameramen rushed to the scene. Rumours raced around. The government sent up the air force for a closer look. Panic spread over an area of two hundred square miles from which the original cause had judiciously disappeared.]

["Finally, let's consider this auto smash. We know the cause; the survivor was able to tell us before he died. He said the driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and started buzzing around his face."

"It nearly happened to me once."

Ignoring that, Wolf went on, "The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being its size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid, and in this case it didn't even use it. Nevertheless it killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap."

"I see the point," agreed Mowry, "but where do I come in?"

"Right here," said Wolf. "We want you to become a wasp."]

Having grown up on a planet of the alien enemy before the start of the war, Mowry can speak and read their language like a native; a little surgical intervention makes him look just like one of them. It's not long before he's dropped off secretly on an enemy planet. His task: to get the enemy to waste as much of their resources as possible.

You'll remember this one once you're through. I don't know if Eric Frank Russell was ever a spy, but if not he had GREAT information. How one man can tie up a whole planet by–well, you'll read about it.

The aliens of "Wasp" are based on the Japanese of World War II to a large degree. The culture is rigid and hierarchical. That, of course, makes the mischief Mowry pulls all the more fun. And dangerous.

"Wasp" has been in and out of print for a long time. Terry Pratchett praised it. It doesn't seem to be in print right now, but used copies aren't hard to find online or in shops. Ebook versions are available from the usual sources. And you can download a copy legally–not borrow, download and own–from the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/RusselEricFrankWasp

You can find a complete spreadsheet of all the books I've recommended here to date (along with links to each post) here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSzubtaPojvprNwZCeR6N4xzCpZzMeb4xrrEHPtk6Bvx3RGj1Bxdg2KWY0CcjHjxUfMTGTF1eYpyoFn/pubhtml

Happy reading! 🤓📖

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