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The claws were bad enough in the first place—nasty, crawling little death-robots. But when they began to imitate their creators, it was time for the human race to make peace—if it could! The Russian soldier made his way nervously up the ragged side of the hill, holding his gun ready. He glanced around him, licking his dry lips, his face set. From time to time he reached up a gloved hand and wiped perspiration from his neck, pushing down his coat collar. Eric turned to Corporal Leone. “Want him? Or can I have him?” He adjusted the view sight so...

Obituary for Michael Stern Hart Michael Stern Hart was born in Tacoma, Washington on March 8, 1947. He died on September 6, 2011 in his home in Urbana, Illinois, at the age of 64. His is survived by his mother, Alice, and brother, Bennett. Michael was an Eagle Scout (Urbana Troop 6 and Explorer Post 12), and served in the Army in Korea during the Vietnam era. Hart was best known for his 1971 invention of electronic books, or eBooks. He founded Project Gutenberg, which is recognized as one of the earliest and longest-lasting online literary projects. He often...

Preface. In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as...

It's bad enough that American films dominate European cinemas. Now Google is trying to do the same for Anglo-Saxon literature with a massive project to put millions of books from major libraries in the U.S. and Britain online. Libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and the New York Public Library are onboard for the project and it has generated a great deal of excitement in academic circles. Well, some academic circles. A rallying cry has sprung up from -- of course -- France to once again fight the English onslaught. Warning continental Europeans that the move will lead to a skewed...

Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT Published: December 14, 2004 Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web. It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public...

<p>120,000 fully searchable texts and counting … Jeff Bezos is building the world's biggest digital book archive. It's an info-age dream come true - and the best way to sell books ever.</p> <p>The fondest dream of the information age is to create an archive of all knowledge. You might call it the Alexandrian fantasy, after the great library founded by Ptolemy I in 286 BC. Through centuries of aggressive acquisition, the librarians of Alexandria, Egypt, collected hundreds of thousands of texts. None survives. During a final wave of destruction, in AD 641, invaders fed the bound volumes and papyrus scrolls into the furnaces of the public baths, where they are said to have burned for six months. "The lesson," says Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, "is to keep more than one copy."</p>

I just came across a great website that I wanted to point out to Freepers. It is called Project Gutenburg, and it offers books free to download. Since they can only do this with books whose copywrites have expired, most books date from prior to 1923. However, there seems to be many great finds ready to be read. Here is a link to a zipped text file of all the titles, and here is one for the authors. The website also has an alphabetical listing along with a search function. I like anything that is free, so if you are...

I apologize in advance for the vanity, but I'd like to request some of the talents of the folks on Free Republic to assist in proofreading public domain books for Project Gutenberg.  Project Gutenberg is the original internet site for the publication and distribution of books that are a part of the public domain, and as such have no copyright. PG has published over 30,000 ebooks for free download in a variety of formats for anyone with an internet connection to enjoy at their leisure. The Distributed Proofers are producing over a hundred books a month for publication and, like...

Sony's e-book store now has more than 1 million titles Sony today announced that there are more than 1 million public domain books available through the Google Books project, as Sony continues to battle with Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. "We are committed to ensuring our customers have the freedom to discover and read content from the widest possible range of sources,” Sony eBook Store Director Chris Smythe said in a statement.  “We’re proud to offer access to the broadest range of eBooks today – from hot new releases, to New York Times Best Sellers, to classics and hard to...

Some of you may be aware of Project Gutenberg, a project dedicated to making public domain books available for free to anyone on the internet. Since these books have no copyright, anyone can scan them into a computer and make them available on the internet if they so choose. Project Gutenberg is attempting to do this in a methodical and high-quality manner. I've recently come across an associated project that is attempting to harness the power of the millions of folks on the net to speed up the process of getting the scanned pages of the books that have been...