Ten Frederick Pohl books for $40 (Multiformat, DRM-free)

[pdurrant]

Baen have ten books by Frederick Pohl available in a bundle for just $40:

http://www.webscription.net/p-1401-f...-volume-i.aspx

The individual books will be available for $5 each, but the $40 price on the bundle is only available for a limited time.

Blurb:
He's Mr. Science Fiction. He's done it all from founding pulp pioneer to book editor of the best of the best to best-selling author himself...Frederik Pohl has done it all. Lifelong friend to the likes of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke -- and just about every science fiction writer of note during the genre's Golden Age and beyond.

And THEN came the 1970s to the present, when Pohl proved he'd just begun to create science fiction and a torrent of amazing stories poured forth. If you take your SF with a sense of wonder. With sparkling wit. With a bit of social satire that doesn't for a moment feel heavy-handed or one-sided, you'll find Pohl is a bountiful font. Okay -- he's more like a Niagara Falls of Wonder, to tell the truth. So much -- and all of it of such quality -- that it seemed almost impossible to sample, much less collect.

We've done it.

Here is Volume I of two compelling volumes of the best of Frederik Pohl. Here you'll find the "Heechee" saga -- the novels and stories of the super-advance technology of the Heechee and what humanity did to itself and the universe when it discovered this portal to the stars. These are stories abounding in mind-blowing ideas: say you escape a black hole into which your lover falls. And yet she is still alive -- still young -- on the event horizon, even as you live out your life and attempt to rescue her. Stories peopled with every-man heroes faced with a universe that does not necessarily have the survival and prosperity of the common man at the base of its design. Yes, these are the "Gateway" and "Heechee" tales that garnered Pohl every major award in the field.

But we're just getting started. Also in Volume I are Jem, Black Star Rising, Drunkard's Walk -- novels of sparkling wit that are both fascinating explorations of alien and futuristic human culture and subtle commentary on the excess, charlatanism, and general wackiness of our own contemporary times. But the books have a serious side as well. Pohl's classic Jem, for instance, explores a planet where the collectivist, individualist and "middle way" types have a chance to really duke it out in a frontier setting. And you'll get some darker glimpses through the looking glass, as well, with chilling SF standards such as The Demon in the Skull (what if, in a monstrous experiment, a voice in your head turned you into a killing machine while you were forced to look on helplessly?).

And we top off Volume I with a look into the mind of the author himself. Yep, we've included The Way the Future Was, Pohl's amazing memoir of his early years -- years that would encompass two or three career's worth of accomplishment and incredible friends for a mere mortal. You'll experience the explosion that was science fiction in its early, gusher days. Here you'll meet the founders of science fiction as a story-telling medium. First meetings among the legends. The creation of fandom with the Futurians. Pohl was there, and in on it all. He even instigated a good part of it!

Here's the skinny on Volume I:

Heechee Rendezvous
The Gateway Trip
Annals of the Heechee
Starburst
Black Star Rising
Jem
Drunkard's Walk
The Demon in the Skull
The Best of Frederik Pohl
The Way the Future Was

A massive Pohl compilation of wonder. No shipping costs. No dead tree crumble. Big thought. Huge adventure. Massively wonder-inducing ideas. And, of course, all presented in the reader-friendly, unencrypted formats Webscriptions is known for. For the next two months, Volume I of the Best of Frederick Pohl will go for $40. Then the e-volume dissolves and we offer the individual e-book titles for $5 each.

Frederik Pohl. Galactic Gatekeeper. SF Cornerstone and Grandmaster. Legend of legends. Builder-of-worlds. Give yourself the journey of several lifetimes, with ideas and adventure spanning from Pohl to Pohl!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Baen have ten books by Frederick Pohl available in a bundle for just $40:

http://www.webscription.net/p-1401-f...-volume-i.aspx

And now I have some hard choices to make. I've been trying to buy no more than one new book for every three books I read (or otherwise remove from my TBR pile).

So far I'm doing quite well - 78 off the list and only 22 bought. But to keep my ratio above 3:1 I'd need to read another 18 books before I can buy this bundle. And that's ignoring the books I'm due to get by subscriptions (Analog, Asimov's, F&SF).

Last year my resolve was swept away by a fabulous offer on Agatha Christie books (currently I've read 9 out of 80+!). I was hoping to manage in 2011 to get my TBR pile below 300....

[ATDrake]

Maybe think of it in economic terms? If you can read those extra 18 books in the next two months before the bundle pricing deal expires, all very well and good.

But if circumstances might delay you, then maybe it's better to get the bundle now and save $10 to put towards other books (not that that helps your TBR situation in the long run, I suppose, but maybe you could spend it on booze or gifts or stuff it into savings), and make up for the read deficit later if you're likely to just end up getting the same titles at some point anyway.

And these are also older works, and they usually wrote much shorter novels back in the day. So once you get started reading them, it'll probably go by pretty quickly.

Thanks for the heads up, by the way. I'm not really acquainted with Pohl's work, but his blog is apparently pretty good, and I wouldn't mind trying more of his stuff.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

And now I have some hard choices to make. I've been trying to buy no more than one new book for every three books I read (or otherwise remove from my TBR pile).

So far I'm doing quite well - 78 off the list and only 22 bought. But to keep my ratio above 3:1 I'd need to read another 18 books before I can buy this bundle. And that's ignoring the books I'm due to get by subscriptions (Analog, Asimov's, F&SF).

Last year my resolve was swept away by a fabulous offer on Agatha Christie books (currently I've read 9 out of 80+!). I was hoping to manage in 2011 to get my TBR pile below 300....

Whee!!! There goes another $40... C'mon Baen, hit me again with Volume 2.

Seriously. Some good stuff. I'll still like to get Man Plus and the famous collaberations with C.M. Kornbluth - The Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

maybe it's better to get the bundle now and save $10

I'm inclining to this position at the moment.

And Amazon UK choose this time to do an special 75% or more off offer on over 200 Kindle ebooks. At least 8 or so of which I'd rather like to have.... and they're all under £1.50.

I do like good deals on ebooks. I really shouldn't complain. I guess that this is why my TBR pile is so big!

[ATDrake]

Go for it!

That $10 you save at Baen is like what? £6.50 for you to spend on Amazon? That pays for 4 books already, at ~ 80% off for some really good titles, no less.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Baen have ten books by Frederick Pohl available in a bundle for just $40:

http://www.webscription.net/p-1401-f...-volume-i.aspx

Thanks...! Done and done..

[cromag]

I admire your principles, pdurrant, but some rules were made to be broken!

This will be my first big ebook purchase.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by cromag

I admire your principles, pdurrant, but some rules were made to be broken!

This will be my first big ebook purchase.

Yes, you're right. And I've just come into an unexpected $23, so it's going towards these.

[starrigger]

Pohl is one of the best in the field. I'm puzzled, though, by the fact that this volume appears to feature two Gateway sequels (the Heechee books), but not the novel Gateway that started the series. Unless Gateway is included in the "The Gateway Trip," which is described as a collection of stories. Can anyone who has actually bought the bundle comment?

[Andanzas]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Pohl is one of the best in the field. I'm puzzled, though, by the fact that this volume appears to feature two Gateway sequels (the Heechee books), but not the novel Gateway that started the series. Unless Gateway is included in the "The Gateway Trip," which is described as a collection of stories. Can anyone who has actually bought the bundle comment?

I was wondering that myself. According to the table of contents, it's not included.

The Gateway Trip

Table of Contents

PART ONE: THE VISIT
PART TWO: THE MERCHANTS: OF VENUS
PART THREE: THE GATEWAY: ASTEROID
PART FOUR: THE STARSEEKERS
PART FIVE: THE HOME: PLANET
PART SIX: OTHER WORLDS
PART SEVEN: HEECHEE: TREASURES
PART EIGHT: LOOKING FOR: COMPANY
MISSION STINKPOT
PART NINE: THE AGE OF GOLD
PART TEN: IN THE CORE

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Pohl is one of the best in the field. I'm puzzled, though, by the fact that this volume appears to feature two Gateway sequels (the Heechee books), but not the novel Gateway that started the series. Unless Gateway is included in the "The Gateway Trip," which is described as a collection of stories. Can anyone who has actually bought the bundle comment?

One of the recidivist publishers has that one unfortunately - as well as others, I am sure.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

One of the recidivist publishers has that one unfortunately - as well as others, I am sure.

Gateway and the sequels were all published by Del Rey, at least originally. Are they now held by different publishers? (Are these ebooks Baen books? Or just distributed by Baen?)

It's also possible that they're holding Gateway for Volume 2.

On the other hand, I'm thinking, wasn't "The Merchants of Venus" incorporated into Gateway? Is it possible that The Gateway Trip is really the novel strangely repackaged?

[ChaosInc]

Heechee Series goes
1. Gateway
2. Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
3. Heechee Rendezvous
4. The Annuals of the Heechee
5. The Gateway Trip
6. The Boy Who would Live Forever
7? Short story called 'A Home For Old Ones' that I believe was done in 'Horizons.'