Intro
Project Gutenberg is an archive, also a treasure trove. The books are out of copyright, which places the bulk of the archive at between seventy and two hundred and fifty years old. In that period, the English language has changed. So you need to be tuned in to the sound, subjects and concerns. Mostly. Like pirate’s treasure, you can not trade a doubloon at the corner shop. However, if you are into that kind of thing, Gutenberg carries some newer material. In particular, there is a chest of nineteen‐fifties sci‐fi, and of the sci‐fi books that preceded that explosion of pulp fiction. Much of this work was published in magazines, where copyright has been lost.
In the fifties SciFi was a dedicated bunch of enthusiasts, often close to their readers, who wrote mostly short stories for magazines. In reputedly intense and enthusiastic meetings the readers and writers refined what sci‐fi is, and is not. They grew increasingly vocal that they had a legitimate genre of writing—how American, to recast commercial activity as Art! So nineteen‐fifties sci‐fi is not what is known as sci‐fi commonly. That would be men with ray‐guns in dystopic futures populated by machines. Gutenberg’s stock runs more from early other‐world stories to what would nowadays be classed as hardcore sci‐fi, which means sci‐fi concerned with science, and a few flashes of the literary SciFi that followed in the sixties and seventies. These movements carried a lot of freeloaders, who hoped to make cash from the popularity. Which could not be told from the eccentrics, of which there were many.
Though this is not a knowledgeable survey, nor is it a serious effort to cover Gutenberg stock, I have read about, so if you have an interest…