Winston Science Fiction Series

Thought others, like me, of a (ahem) certain age might be pleased to see this.

http://ourworlds.net/thunderchild_cms/index.php/en/2-uncategorised/394-the-winst...

Cool. I see there's a dormant LT group that never took off.

But: ebooks only on Kindle? Not buying.

These predate me, but I'm still grateful for the link. :)

I am slowly working my way through the series.they are rather cute,a bit earnest but with a true enthusiasm for science. I would have loved to have such books available as a teen. I've read 11 so far,and can read another 11 on Open Library . The endpapers are awesome.
I am often surprised at how tough a time the young heroes have. They either get beaten up or have to struggle through dangerous situations in a way you don't often see with YA books today. :0)

>3 LShelby: You are welcome!

>2 dukedom_enough: Get Calibre and if there's no DRM, you can convert to whatever format you require. It's what I do. If there's DRM, then you need the DeDRM tools (Apprentice Alf) and it even handles the new Kindle format.

>6 Maddz: Thanks. I knew that, more or less; my issue is more with Amazon being too powerful for everyone's good. I use Kobo, though I'm sure they have their own problems. Or Weightless Books or the like. But I understand that Amazon is impossible to say no to, for a small publisher.

But thanks >1 ThomasWatson: for finding this. Beyond the Winstons, there's at least one book I want. May ask them if they can branch out to other platforms.

Elon Musk's new stainless steel rocket?

>4 dustydigger: Sorry I'm late for the party but your comment about the Winston series brought back a very sharp memory from my pre-teen years. The Winston series had been out for a number of years and, at the time I discovered some of them in the public library, the last few of the series had not yet been published. The first book I checked out was Son of the Stars by Jones. I liked the book and when I returned it to our very small (and I do mean small as in about 25' x 20 ') local public library I noted there were two other books in the series - Mists of Dawn by Oliver and Vault of Ages. I checked out those two, read them, noted the listing of other books in the series on their jacket backs, and returned them to the library. There were no other books from the series on the shelf.

I was a weekly visitor to the library so I know the librarian had taken note of my comings and goings. I'm guessing she saw me dithering around the SF section and decided to come over and ask me if she could help with anything. I pulled Son of the Stars off the shelf and said I wished "my library" had some of these other titles. She smiled and said, "We don't have any more of those here but the downtown library has all of them. If you want to read more just fill out one of the request cards and I'll send it in and the book should be here in a week."

For a 10 year old the idea that you could do something like THIS was just unbelievable! I asked her how many I could ask for and she said I could fill out a card for as many of the books as I wanted to get but only one book per card. I remember grabbing the Jones book, taking a fist full of yellow cards and sitting down at a small table and requesting everything listed on the back....a week or so later it started raining books. Almost every day when I came in from playing my Mom would tell me the library had called and another request was in so I would hop on my bike and ride down to the library to pick up the latest visitor from downtown.

I spent that summer riding my bike back and forth between home and the library (about a mile each way), reading everything they sent, noting new titles on the later books, filling out requests for those and, when they came in, chewing through them as well. The last book of the series I read was The Star Conquerors by Bova. The series was my first introduction to real science fiction (prior to this all I had read were a couple of Tom Swift books) and I became a fan of the genre for life.

My father had several of the Winston books in his library, and I read them all. Looking back, they weren't that good (probably a couple of steps behind Heinlein's juveniles) but they were still fun to read.

>9 alco261:

That's a great story, love the eye-opening power of inter-library loan. Real world magic. Kudos to the librarian for reaching out, never have occurred to me to ask for help and even had I known about ILL, I might easily have been too cowed to approach the desk on my own.

>9 alco261:

Similar story for me, back in the 70's, with the inter-library loan. It wasn't science fiction, but was science. I had received a microscope for a present in the 7th grade and was fascinated with searching for little animalcules in pond water. Our town was on the small size (about 1500 back then) but we had a one room library. I wanted books on micro organisms, but they didn't have any. However, the librarian let me know she could get whatever I wanted from the library in Salem, Oregon. This was before the PC and way before the internet. She phoned up the Salem library for me, talked to a librarian there and found books for me. A week later, they arrived.

I ordered many books that summer, and searched more waters with my microscope, with little luck. But I learned quite bit.

-Shawn