I am talking, of course, about Terry Pratchett, a man whose life and death can be seen in his books - from the fripary of Colour of Magic to the gloom and rough edges of Shepherds Crown.  We can't really blame him for the rough edges, while the story was finished I am sure the work would have carried on till those rough edges had been smoothed, except for the walk across the grey desert.   Despite this, I still believe his work just got better and better and I miss not having another of his stories to look forward to.

But in the mean time I have also been reading quite a bit of science fiction from a publisher called Baen.  I have always loved science fiction; I remember going to see the film '2001, a Space Odyssey' (back in the days when we thought this sort of thing could happen - we had reached the moon in two decades, surely we would be settled on Mars by 2001).  I had already read the book and I felt disappointed that the film was not as good as the book, till I discovered that Clarke had written the book after the film was created.  Ever since, I realised that my imagination fired by a good story can always surpass the visualisation available on film (and even CGI).

However, getting back to Baen, I discovered Honor Harrington and fell in love with the free downloads she came on.  The problem with the free downlads is that they are not complete, so I have extracted the files and reorganised them so I can read them more easily, and I am publishing them here.  In the spirit of Baen, I just ask that if you like these works, buy a few of the books so the author (and the publisher) can carry on with their excellent work.

One of the good things about Baen is that they actively encourage Fan Fiction (and even publish the best of it).  I had never really thought of fan fiction as a serious subject (although my daughter writes it), but with Sir Terry's passing I may start looking at Discworld Fan Fiction and this site looks a good place to start.

And finaly, back to my old favourites, Narnia.
These books are copied from fadedpage.com and are public domain works in Canada - if you are outside Canada, please respect the copyright laws in your country.