Baen's entire Webscriptions catalog available for free... in low Earth orbit

Hey, here is another reason to get off your backside and become an astronaut! According to SFScope: Baen Books is now offering its entire Webscriptions catalog of e-books free to the astronauts living aboard the International Space Station. Baen's Webscriptions have more than 600 of the publisher's books available as downloadable e-books in a variety of unencrypted e-book formats. Baen Publisher Toni Weisskopf offered to make the complete Webscription library available to ISS personnel, free of charge, including both of Baen's on-line magazines, The Grantville Gazette and Jim Baen's Universe, and NASA promptly accepted.

"It's very satisfying to know that ISS crewmembers will be able to get our books easily and without fuss," Weisskopf said. "They're the ones who are truly creating a future for humankind in space."

Baen Books Free to Disabled Readers

Baen Books (www.baen.com), a publisher of science fiction, will provide its books to fans who are blind, paralysed, or dyslexic, or are amputees, in electronic form free of charge, effective immediately.

Baen Books is making this offer in recognition of Veterans Day, and all our disabled military veterans. Many Baen authors are veterans themselves, using a military setting as the setting of their tales. Right now convalescing vets might welcome an exciting, fast-action tale to pass the time.

Jim Baen, founder of Baen Books, who passed on June 28, 2006, decided to "provide each challenged reader with a permanent pass" to the regular e-publication of Baen’s new books. His successor, publisher Toni Weisskopf, is implementing his idea with this program.

For more information, click the story title link.

Jim Baen's Top 10 Sci-Fi books

As we all know by now, Jim Baen inovative publisher of Baen Books died June 11th of this year. Shortly before his death he spoke with author David Drake about a project that Amazon asked him to do, which was to create a list of his top 10 science fiction books. Here is Jim's list, click the title link to go to the full article:

1. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
2. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
3. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
4. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague deCamp
7. Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke
8. Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein
9. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
10. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain