January 1st marks the start of a fresh year and with the New Year comes Public Domain Day. This is the day when the legal copyright for certain creative works expires, opening those works up for public use. Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost. This year’s Public Domain Day targets works from 1927.
Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a great FAQ which explains what the public domain is, how materials pass into it, how those materials can be used, and the general timelines associated with intellectual property. Go check it out! Also, here’s a small list of the hundreds of books that became available today. Try some. You might be surprised by what you like.
| No. | Book | Desc. | Store |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  | Ashenden Or the British Agent by Somerset Maugham Mystery. A collection of loosely linked stories based on Maugham’s experience as a member of British Intelligence in Europe during the First World War. |  $1.99 |
| 2. | Weird Tales Vol. 9 No. 6 by Collected Authors Pulp. Magazine collection of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror pulp fiction. Jess Nevins called out Wilford Allen’s “The Arctic Death” as one of the first science fiction detective short stories as protagonist Charles Beinbar investigates “a series of murders committed by a race of evil alien balls of energy” bent on eradicating humanity. Sounds like a hoot. |  $0.00 |
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| 3. | Weird Tales Vol. 10 No. 2 by Collected Authors More Pulp. Jess Nevins’ Twitter post is a gold mine this year. From the same magazine that brought you energy ball aliens out to wreck all of humanity comes another sci-fi, fantasy, horror pulp collection. This issue’s winner is The Bride of Osiris, a historically questionable abduction tale featuring “technologically advanced ancient Egyptians [living] underneath Chicago”. Public domain gold. | $0.00 |
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| 4. |  | Amazing Stories – April 1927 by Collected Authors Even More Pulp. Amazing Stories is famous for publishing stories from early science fiction and fantasy writers like H.G. Wells. This issue begins with Henry Hugh Simmons’ tale of the “The Automatic Self-Serving Dining Table”, featuring the recurring character Professor Hicks, the Unlucky Inventor. This is the last of Jess Nevins’ recommendations included in this list. Please read the original linked thread, though, as it contains more gems. | $5.00 |
| 5. | The Big Four by Agatha Christie Espionage. This is actually a collection of stories Christie separately wrote for the magazine Sketch and includes her popular characters Hercule Poirot, Arthur Hastings, and Inspector Japp. The beginnings and endings of each story were modified to imply a narrative flow. The result is a tale of international intrigue, a dip into spy fiction rather than a standard murder mystery. As such, it is a reflection of its time, coming off of the first World War. Like a lot of these old books, there is some awful stereotyping, but if you want to see a different side of Christie, this is it. | $6.29 |
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| 6. | The Case Book of Sherlock Homes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Mystery. These are the last twelve Sherlock Homes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published in the Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927. All but three of the stories were adapted into the second excellent Granada TV series starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. Some critics found these last stories not as good — a common complaint at the end of a series. However, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a spare and masterful writer and that’s what makes these stories still a good read. | $0.00 |
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| 7. | The Radio Amateur’s Handbook by Francis Edward Handy Maker. There are forty-one editions of this book, the last one apparently published in 1964. The one I am linking to is the first edition from 1926. I’m including it in this list because there is something to be said for reading about old concepts of technology. There are fundamental truths in such texts that were known and have not changed in the intervening years. And in a lot of ways, that can cut through the noise that accumulates around a topic as time passes. I flipped through it and found it interesting. Give it a try. | $0.00 |
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