New stories from the 20th century sci-fi magazine Worlds of If Science Fiction have entered the public domain, and here is how to download them.
As you already know, Project Gutenberg, a leading source of free public domain books, is a great destination for fans of science fiction.
You can find here many classic works, naming only the stories by Philip K. Dick (including Mr. Spaceship and Second Variety), or issues of the vintage sci-fi magazine “Astounding Stories of Super-Science.” And this is just for starters.
Since the beginning of the year, Project Gutenberg volunteers have added to the catalog almost 40 new stories from the popular American science fiction magazine published between 1952 and 1974 – Worlds of If Science Fiction.
Among the newly released stories, you will find several works by Frank Banta, Keith Laumer, or Fritz Leiber. There is a story “Young Man from Elsewhen” by Sylvia Jacobs, there is Vance Aandahl’s “1,492,633 Marlon Brandos,” or “Virgin Ground” by Rosel George Brown.
Right now, the total number of stories from If magazine that you can download for free from Project Gutenberg has crossed 250!
Each ebook is available in several formats. If you read books on a Kindle or Kindle app, download mobi file format. Epub file should work for almost any other ebook platform or app.
Before downloading the file, you can preview the text in a browser on your computer by clicking “Read this book online: HTML” on a list of available formats.
Please note that, although having a cover of the relevant issue of If magazine, each publication includes only one story from this issue.
In other words, by downloading “Seven-Day Terror” by R.A. Lafferty, published for the first time in the March 1962 issue of If magazine, you download only this story, and not the entire issue. Luckily, the stories from a single issue are published one after another, so you can find them easily on a list of search results.
The best way to find on Project Gutenberg all the stories from If magazine is to search for a phrase If Science Fiction. On a list of results, you will see a few unrelated titles, but this is by far the most accurate way to grab most of the If Magazine sci-fi stories, if you are determined to have them all.
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