List of Early Science Fiction (PD and not yet in the catalog!)

[philchenevert]

- Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw [a five part series of plays]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_Methuselah
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13084

Chuck, is it really possible that LV has not recorded this play? I am aghast.

[gweeks]

Men into space by Murray Leinster
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/69299

Greg

[alg1001]

Hi All,
If anyone ever wants to BC the Short Science Fiction Collection, just let me know. I am not its owner; just its keeper. I'd be happy for someone else to take a turn.

[gweeks]

Forgotten world by Edmond Hamilton
https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/69357

Greg

[flavo5000]

Here's a few sci-fi I've found while poking around on Hathitrust. While all of these were released after 1926, they are all Google-digitized and are indicated as being public domain in the US.

Drome by John Martin Leahy

A hollow earth story

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435060852241&view=1up&seq=7

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

THE RADIUM POOL is the story of the desperate search by two gallant men for a lost woman; of their meeting with the weird Jovians in the hidden workshop under the Valley of Death; of the uncanny mysteries of the Pool, and the immortality found therein.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822043034990&view=1up&seq=7

Pioneers of Space by George Adamski

Did Adamski really ride a UFO to the moon, mars and venus? Adamski claims, he said, were based upon a firsthand encounter with an extraterrestrial in the California desert circa 1953

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858026230486&view=1up&seq=5

Men of Other Planets by Kenneth Heuer

he Men of Other Planets is a 1950's speculative science attempt to imagine the other life forms that might exist in our Solar System.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858046736710&view=1up&seq=15

The Space Plague by George O. Smith

A fantastic story of disappearance and chase in one man's weird and terrifying race with time and unseen enemies to locate and stop a dread menace that struck slowly and painfully--from outer space!

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435057536013&view=1up&seq=5

The Starmen by Leigh Brackett

Outcast in space. Michael Trehearne had always been an outcast among his people on Earth. He knew he was different. He did not know how or why. Then one day, on the wind-swept coast of Brittany, a bewitchingly beautiful girl appeared & told him he had the look of the Vardda--those elite star travelers who alone could withstand the rigors of intergalactic flight.
Michael had to join them, had to find his place in the universe at last. But it would not be easy. For even when they allowed him to risk his life aboard their ship, to seal his fate upon their planet, even then, they viewed him as an outcast, a dangerous changeling who suddenly threatened them. He was a man who sooner or later would have to be destroyed!

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000381497&view=1up&seq=9

When the Birds Fly South by Stanton Coblentz

Dan Prescott, an American adventurer, discovers the hidden valley of Sobul in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, inhabited by a strange race of winged people known as the Ibandru.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015060574517&view=1up&seq=7

The Wonder Stick by Stanton Coblentz
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b236311&view=1up&seq=9

The Incredible Planet by John W. Campbell Jr
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001474559&view=1up&seq=7

[gweeks]

I don't think I would trust their PD determination. I'm seeing a renewal for The Castle of Iron for the original Unknown publication.

Greg

Rex Gordon is a UK Author so PG won't touch it.
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/18137
Highways in Hiding by George O. Smith https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/20519 vt. for The Space Plague
The Starmen is in my notes as a possible, but I've never gotten my hands on the Startling Stories edition I could clear.
The Incredible Planet Only the existence is in my notes. A number of other JWCs have cleared with PG.

I have a determination from PG that we are allowed to file on A. E. Van Vogt for works first published in or after 1945 as he moved to the U.S. in 1944.

[flavo5000]

I don't think I would trust their PD determination. I'm seeing a renewal for The Castle of Iron for the original Astounding publication.

Where are you seeing this was in Astounding? According to isfdb, the original novella was in Unknown Fantasy Fiction and the expanded full-length novel which the link above is for wasn't included in any magazine.

[flavo5000]

Highways in Hiding by George O. Smith https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/20519 vt. for The Space Plague

And yea, I knew Space Plague was an abridged version of Highways in Hiding, but I thought someone might still find it of interest since it is technically a different version of the book at about half the length of Highways.

[annise]

It would be a good idea for you to edit your suggestions and remove the non-PD ones. This isn't a wish list. It is clearly labelled .

List of Early Science Fiction ( PD and not yet in the calalog)

We are lucky to be able to record so much Sci-Fi because of an unusual non-renewal law.

Anne

[flavo5000]

It would be a good idea for you to edit your suggestions and remove the non-PD ones. This isn't a wish list. It is clearly labelled .

List of Early Science Fiction ( PD and not yet in the calalog)

We are lucky to be able to record so much Sci-Fi because of an unusual non-renewal law.

Anne

As far as I know, everything I listed is PD, pending what gweeks comes back with on Castle of Iron. But like I said, even that one, it looks to me like Hathitrust is correct. They usually are. They have a whole massive 150+ of people who do nothing but do copyright reviews. So if they say something is PD in the US, I would think they could be as trusted as PG is.

I did go ahead and remove Little Fuzzy since that one's on PG.

[gweeks]

The renewal info for The Castle of Iron is:

The castle of iron, by L. Sprague de
Camp & Fletcher Pratt. (In Street
& Smith's unknown, Apr. 1941)
<A9> 28Feb41; B489101. L. Sprague de
Camp & Inga Pratt Clark (W);
26Aug68; R441098.

I saw Street and smith on science fiction and assumed Astounding. It's actually Unknown. The renewal on the earlier magazine publication holds the copyright on the later book publication even if the book was expanded.

There are reasons PG will not allow non-US authors or works published outside of the US for Rule 6. Non-US authors are likely to have the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 which implemented the Uruguay Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) apply to their works. It gets very complicated and tricky to determine that. Much more error prone than the usual non renewal determination.

Greg

[alg1001]

But like I said, even that one, it looks to me like Hathitrust is correct. They usually are. They have a whole massive 150+ of people who do nothing but do copyright reviews. So if they say something is PD in the US, I would think they could be as trusted as PG is.

I don't think Hathi Trust does extensive copyright searches. They are preserving documents for research purposes basically, not providing ebooks for people to enjoy like PG does. You can't even download a book from Hathi Trust as far as I know, just a page at a time. Anything published before 1926 with the scanned book's copyright saying such, I would use from Hathi Trust. For the science fiction or anything else after that date, I only trust PG.

[gweeks]

Robert Crane is a UK Author and PG won't touch it.
George Adamski is a German author and PG won't touch it.

Men of Other Planets is non-fiction and doesn't interest me enough to try to clear it for PG. Non-fiction often has problems trying to clear it with PG Rule 6.

I'm downloading Drone to check and I have a copy of The Radium Pool already and will check it.

Greg

[flavo5000]

But like I said, even that one, it looks to me like Hathitrust is correct. They usually are. They have a whole massive 150+ of people who do nothing but do copyright reviews. So if they say something is PD in the US, I would think they could be as trusted as PG is.

I don't think Hathi Trust does extensive copyright searches. They are preserving documents for research purposes basically, not providing ebooks for people to enjoy like PG does. You can't even download a book from Hathi Trust as far as I know, just a page at a time. Anything published before 1926 with the scanned book's copyright saying such, I would use from Hathi Trust. For the science fiction or anything else after that date, I only trust PG.

This is Hathitrust's write-up on their copyright review program. It sounds to me that they do a pretty extensive check:
https://www.hathitrust.org/copyright-review

But since they have 150+ people working on it, there's always a chance someone may not have researched as thoroughly as necessarily, particularly in the example of Castle of Iron where the novel itself doesn't seem to have a copyright renewal but the original story in Unknown does.

Oh, I also found this one:
The Legion of Time/After the World Ends by Jack Williamson
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435059969030&view=1up&seq=1

This feels like another one that could be tricky since it's a compilation of two previously copyrighted works.

[flavo5000]

I don't think I would trust their PD determination. I'm seeing a renewal for The Castle of Iron for the original Unknown publication.

Greg

Rex Gordon is a UK Author so PG won't touch it.
A. E. Van Vogt is a Canadian author so PG won't touch it.
Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/18137
Highways in Hiding by George O. Smith https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/20519 vt. for The Space Plague
The Starmen is in my notes as a possible, but I've never gotten my hands on the Startling Stories edition I could clear.
The Incredible Planet Only the existence is in my notes. A number of other JWCs have cleared with PG.

I deleted Castle of Iron based on the above discussion. I also removed the Rex Gordon and Robert Crane books since they would both still be under copyright in the UK and as such would be under copyright in the US under Uruguay Round Agreements Act. I didn't remove the George Adamski book, since he is actually an American author, born in Poland but moved to the US when he was 2 years old. I also left A. E. Van Vogt because he had American citizenship when he wrote Players of Null-A and as such it should be considered an American novel, not a Canadian one. This is based on a document published by the US Copyright office on foreign works where they state a foreign work "refers to
works created by author(s) who are not U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals and/or works that
were first published abroad". A. E. Van Vogt became an American citizen in 1944, so anything after that point should not fall under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act.