Free (Kindle) Space Trap by Juanita Coulson [Vintage SF Alien Contact Space Opera]

[ATDrake]

Space Trap by noted filksinger Juanita Coulson (ISFDB, Wikipedia) is her vintage standalone science fiction space opera adventure novel involving some sort of inadvertent alien first contact after a spaceship mysteriously becomes downed on a strange planet, free courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press's Venture, who are e-printing it from its original 1976 paperback, where it was #20 in the old Laser Books (non-romance) science fiction imprint (Wikipedia) from Harlequin.

Fun fact: the main reason why I know Juanita Coulson's name in the first place is because long, long ago (but not in a galaxy far, far away), the Firebird Arts & Music catalogue used to have a listing for one her very old OOP quasi-historical-based sf/fantasy paperbacks, which boasted that it had perhaps the most inaccurate cover art ever for the actual story within.

Which is the kind of description one pays attention to, given the notoriously low standard of cover art for sfnal genre to begin with. (I don't really recall the details, but apparently the publisher may have decided to market it as a straightforward historical romance, and that seemed not to have been one of those genre-hybrid sorts of books, and the ensuing character/situation/period depictions were also wrong on top of that.)

Anyway, since then I've been kind of morbidly curious about her actual writing, so it's a real treat to receive one of her novels to try, thanks to Endeavour's generous giveaways of their reprint program.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and probably pretty much everywhere else they sell worldwide, since this is being done via the KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

It was tough picking between this one and the Aarhus University Press' competing offering of a very nifty-looking cultural studies book which includes a lot of Canadian case studies. But I guess there's also some adjacent-Canadiana for Coulson as well, as it turns out that she was an inductee into FilKONtario's Hall of Fame for her filksinging contributions, so I guess it all works out.

Enjoy!

Description
O Brave New World…

Ken Farrell has been paired with the best – and the hardest – mentor as a new Surveyman out of the Academy.

R.C. Zachary is a legend; one of the first Surveymen and a stickler for the rules. Tough but fair, R.C. snaps at an undeserving Ken after a meeting with top brass, piquing the apprentice’s curiosity.

What happened in the meeting that almost caused them to miss their flight time? When R.C. has the two-man team drop by an unscheduled planet, Ken begins to suspect that something is going on.

Soon after a mysterious face warns Ken away from the planet, their ship is caught in an incredibly powerful gravity well, sucking them down towards the strange planet.

After making it to the surface, thanks only to R.C.’s legendary piloting skills, they soon encounter an alien race, one that has become hostile due to a misunderstanding. Ken connects with one of them, Thayenta, and he works to understand the telepathic race even as their leader, Briv, proves to be extremely aggressive.

Can he, Thayenta, and R.C. clear the air?

Will there be peace between the two peoples?

In this thrilling race against time and conflict, alien worlds are explored, human issues addressed, and connection, the most basic instinct of all, is built.

Space Trap is a gripping science fiction outing from Juanita Coulson, beloved author of the Children of the Stars series.

[Dr. Drib]

Got it.

Thank you!

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

free courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press's Venture,

Who are also offering free.


The Worthing Chronicle by Orson Scott Card

Sound of Sirens: (Tales of Skylge #1) by Jen Minkman

To The Moon And Back (Stardust Sci-Fi Romance Series Book 1) by Jocelyn Han



See all 4

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...lisher=venture

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=searc...lisher=venture
http://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-a...lisher=venture

[ATDrake]

^

Technically, no, unfortunately. Those are from other publishers with overlapping names.

The Minkman and Han books are from one "Dutch Venture Publishing", and the Orson Scott Card book appears to be one of those weird-US-rule public domain freebies that isn't even visible from Canada. They may be of interest to some Gentle Readers, but aren't part of Endeavour's own offers.

[koland]

But they do have a few under their own name free today -

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...sher=endeavour

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

^

Technically, no, unfortunately. Those are from other publishers with overlapping names.

The Minkman and Han books are from one "Dutch Venture Publishing", and the Orson Scott Card book appears to be one of those weird-US-rule public domain freebies that isn't even visible from Canada. They may be of interest to some Gentle Readers, but aren't part of Endeavour's own offers.

Thanks.

But The Worthing Chronicle by Orson Scott Card has an Venture Press imprint of Endeavour Press copyright page just like Space Trap

Why they eshew Canada but not UK I don't know.

[tubemonkey]

Thanks, AT

[koland]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Thanks.

But The Worthing Chronicle by Orson Scott Card has an Venture Press imprint of Endeavour Press copyright page just like Space Trap

Why they eshew Canada but not UK I don't know.

Doesn't even show for US searches on Venture+free

Found it and shows not available for sale in the US (but does show a 0.00 price, so probably free somewhere).

http://www.amazon.com/Worthing-Chron.../B01C3I0YOI/re

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

But The Worthing Chronicle by Orson Scott Card has an Venture Press imprint of Endeavour Press copyright page just like Space Trap

Why they eshew Canada but not UK I don't know.

Well, in the case of The Worthing Chronicle, it appears that Endeavour only has the rights for it in regions outside of the US & Canada (I'd have said North America, but it turns out that they offer it in Mexico as well).

As for the usual sort of sfnal "freebies" from well-known recent authors that show up in the UK but not Canada, that's actually very common with those public domain-repackaging publishers who happen to be less than scrupulous about marking exactly which countries they're "allowed" to re-sell those US-PD unrenewed copyright rules that a bunch of vintage golden age sf/fantasy/pulp mystery falls under.

There's at least two such re-publishers who regularly re-offer a bunch of Philip K. Dick and other dead-but-not-otherwise-PD-except-for-selected-works-in-the-US authors (and some living ones, as well) even in the UK (but not Canada).

How it usually happens is if they also sell their books outside of Amazon (and quite a few of them do, according to the Google Play search results that end up cluttering the page when I'm looking for current legit in-print stuff) and rely on the price-matching to drop a few of their works to free (presumably to promote the sales on the rest of their "catalogue"), then the drops usually happen first in the US and UK (probably due to larger userbases willing to click the "Report a Lower Price" function), with Canada becoming a distant third, if ever, to see the price go to $0.00 and show up free in the listings for us.

So, works from authors of a certain age with little self-publishing visibility which pop up in the listings from obscure publishers with that pattern tend to be automatically suspect, IMHO. And sometimes even the known publishers* can mistakenly mark something wrongly, and IIRC, Endeavour does very occasionally do PD reprints and offer them free (or maybe I've just conflated all those "sequels" based on PD works like Raffles which they also offer).

Anyway, the Orson Scott Card is indeed, as you noted, a genuine Venture freebie that they seem to be offering to promote whatever else in his back-catalogue that they've acquired (hopefully the stuff which contains less of the views he's become rather notorious for espousing on his blog and donating time and money to groups which try to enforce those views, with some success overseas in Uganda, apparently).

Thanks for alerting us to it! (And thanks also to koland for taking the time to dig up the direct URL for it, which is usually unfindable outside of countries that it's eligible for.)

* But to balance things out, some publishers such as Open Road Media are actually very scrupulous, perhaps overly so, with the US PD-reprints they offer. They've got 99 cent Dorothy L. Sayers and Patricia Wentworth mysteries which are only PD in the US because of the rules, which they occasionally offer as their daily PD freebie.

Those are completely unavailable outside the US, including Canada, even though they could re-sell the entirety of those authors' non-posthumous works for us under our Life+50 rules. But at they're erring on the side of actually trying not to make extra $$$ from the unwary in places where they shouldn't.

[AnemicOak]

It's weird to see The Worthing Chronicle available anywhere as it was allowed to go out of print a long time ago in favor of The Worthing Saga, which includes the Chronicle book along with a bunch of related stories. The Saga is published by Tor in the US, UK, etc. and you'd think publishing rights for the Chronicle would be part of that in whole.

[ATDrake]

I'm guessing that The Worthing Chronicle, which according to ISFDB was originally published by Ace and expanded from a previous novel also published by them, is somehow considered separately from The Worthing Saga for the purposes of reprint rights (if it happened to get revised again when Tor apparently omnibused it).

And the latter being a Tor book would explain why Canada and the US can't see TWC, if they're technically still holding on to the rights or Orson Scott Card is just hoping that they'll pick it back up for the ebook version with their more prominent distribution system, and the original revised novel was all that Endeavour could get ahold of.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Anyway, the Orson Scott Card is indeed, as you noted, a genuine Venture freebie that they seem to be offering to promote whatever else in his back-catalogue that they've acquired (hopefully the stuff which contains less of the views he's become rather notorious for espousing on his blog and donating time and money to groups which try to enforce those views, with some success overseas in Uganda, apparently).

And the major irony in his views is how much stuff he's written that has very homoerotic behavior, particularly among boys. (Just one example is how all the boys run around naked in the dorms in Ender's Saga. And let's not forget the big fight that takes place in the showers!) Extremely close male/male friendships abound too. It's basically just the other side of screaming "These guys are homosexuals!!!"

And now he's violently homophobic. Hmm...

[FizzyWater]

Did you grow up with brothers? I did - four of them. When they were small, we couldn't keep clothes on them. It was nothing to see at least a couple of them dashing around the house starkers.

[ATDrake]

Now a repeat freebie (in US & UK at least, for some reason it has failed to drop in Canada, so YMMV elsewhere as well) if you happened to miss it earlier.