A regular exploration of public domain genre work available through Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, and Librivox.

By Colleen McMahon: This was a slow week. No new Librivox audiobooks that fit into the genre categories, however broadly drawn. So this might be a good time to mention that Librivox does have a lot of older short science fiction available. They have been doing a series of short science fiction collections for years. 

The way it works is that a volume is started, and anyone can contribute a short science fiction story that is known to be in the public domain. Once there are 15-20 stories, the volume is closed and released and a new one opened. They are up to 64 volumes at this point. If you are curious and would like to sample some of them, the whole Short Science Fiction series is here.

I have a bit of a backlog of random authors who were mentioned in the birthday lists over the last few months, and this is a good time to do a little catching up with some of these.

Stanton Coblentz (1896-1982) had a birthday back in August. He is represented in Project Gutenberg by two short stories:

• The Cosmic Deflector (Amazing Stories, January 1943)
• Flight Through Tomorrow (Fantasy Book, 1947)

“The Cosmic Deflector” has not been recorded yet for Librivox, but “Flight Through Tomorrow” has been recorded three different times for Short Science Fiction Collections 

Paul W. Fairman (1909-1977) was active as an author from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, publishing several novels and many short stories under his own name as well as the pseudonym Ivar Jorgensen. He is also the founding editor of If science fiction magazine, and later became editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic from 1955-1958.

He has four stories on Project Gutenberg:

• Quest of the Golden Ape (novel-length, serialized in Amazing Stories January-March 1957)
• Ten From Infinity (1963) 
• Deadly City (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, March 1953)
• The Beasts in the Void (Imagination, April 1956)

Librivox recordings:

• “The Beasts in the Void” is included in Short Science Fiction Collection 046
• Ten From Infinity

Bryce Walton (1918-1988) is best remembered now as a television script writer (Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and a pulp mystery author, but he was quite prolific in science fiction too.

Project Gutenberg has 16 of his stories. He published most often in If: Worlds of Science Fiction and, interestingly, in two cases he had two stories in one issue, one published under his own name and one under the pseudonym “Kenneth O’Hara”.

• The Highest Mountain (Galaxy, June 1952)
• Strange Alliance  (Fantasy Book, 1947) 
• By Earthlight (Science Fiction Stories, 1953)
• The Mating of the Moons (Orbit Science Fiction, 1953)
• The Victor (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, March 1953)
• To Each His Star (Space Science Fiction, May 1952)
• Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, July 1954)
• Dreamer’s World (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, May 1952)
• Freeway  (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, June 1955)
• Thy Name is Woman (as Kenneth O’Hara, If: Worlds of Science Fiction, March 1953)
• The Chasm (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, December 1956)
• The Happy Herd (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, October 1956)
• The Floater (as Kenneth O’Hara, If: Worlds of Science Fiction, February 1957)
• War Game (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, February 1957)
• Security  (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, December 1957)
• Dark Windows (If: Worlds of Science Fiction, October 1957)

Only two of Walton’s stories have been recorded for Librivox so far: “Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly?” in Short Science Fiction Collection 028, and “Strange Alliance” in Short Science Fiction Collection 035.

Recent Librivox releases:

As I mentioned at the top of this installment, I could not find anything genre-related in the list of recent releases, which is very unusual. However, there is one book that might be of mild interest here: an all-but-forgotten 1923 mystery novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs!

• The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)
  
  The countryside outside of Los Angeles is a paradise on Earth: nature gives bounty on the land, the animals are majestic, the oaks breathe and the natural pools and ponds are all you would want on a summer’s day. And if you are a Pennington or an Evans, life is simple and complete. However, every paradise has a serpent. For Rancho Ganado, that comes in the shape of Bootlegging, Drugs and Murder. All the vice of nearby Hollywood manifest themselves in the picturesque landscape, throwing the lives of these families into turmoil.