http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk
As well as the standard online catalogue and publishers' details, there
is information about future titles, such as the Cambridge Encyclopedia of
the English Language.
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http://www.maxis.co.uk/xpress
A welcome addition to the Web from Hackney's hardboiled black pulp fiction
publishing house, X Press. This is the company that has single-handedly
developed a controversial but highly contemporary, popular publishing genre
in whose ranks reside the blockbuster crack gangster trilogy that includes
Yardie, the gritty Manchester guns saga Moss Side Massive and the equally
explosive domestic struggles of Single Black Female, OPP and the Baby Father
novels. Alongside the catalogue and order form there is a page of news and
reviews that introduces the company to the uninitiated. If the 'guns and
gals' stuff isn't for you, there is also a section of 'classic' books in
a more conventional historical black struggle mode.
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http://www.writepage.com
Purportedly in praise of genre fiction, The Write Page achieves this
only in a roundabout way. In essence, it's several densely typed pages of
potted biographies and long-winded bibliographies of historically neglected
women writers Ü reformers, missionaries, do-gooders, diplomats, diarists,
gossips and, most especially, romance writers. Hidden away on the Modern
Women's Romantic Fiction page are links to Regency Reader and the Western
charms of Rawhide and Lace. Work that one out! Confusingly titled, appallingly
signposted but tremendously satisfying and informative nevertheless.
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http://www.io.com/~aylott/SpaceCrime.html
A very fine name for a science fiction and mystery bookshop. As you'd
imagine it is based in the US but each week it has a What's New section
which is worth perusing to find out what you might want to read next.
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http://www.db.dk/dbaa/jbs/homepage.htm
A dedicated crime fiction fan from Denmark has collated a page of links
which might look a little dry but is actually deceptively good. Some of
the Web sites are a bit of a let down but it's the gossipy exchange of gore
and gripping plot lines in some of the ListServ groups that look most enticing.
The range of material goes from the ubiquitous Nancy Drew to Kinky Friedman,
with a nod to Rumpole, Ian Fleming, Patricia Cornwell and James Ellroy along
the way. The compiler has devoted a whole section to Sherlockiana with details
on crime conventions, Internet murder games and other mysteriously related
resources. Curiouser and curiouser.
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http://www.iac.co.jp/scooterboy/index.html
An exclusive story for the Internet, Scooter Boy is not published anywhere
else. The year is 2015. Analog has been outlawed and Hirlem, aka Scooter
Boy, risks incurring the wrath of the authorities if they find out he's
been playing vinyl records in his bedroom. All he has is his music, his
1958 Vespa and a companion called Monie. Together they ride through the
bleak city, avoiding the blank faces and bombed out minds of the street
youths, who appear bored and vacant and are called Trenz. A love of mod
culture and a sentimental attachment to vinyl cannot fail to make you fall
in love with the wonderful Scooter Boy. As far as Internet is concerned,
this comic book could run and run Ü return every two weeks for a new
episode.
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http://www.tecc.co.uk/twin/pulpfact
Techno Pagan is an online outlet for authors in Pulp Faction's stable,
let loose to give you "some of the most daring and exciting fiction
writing today." Judge for yourself from extracts and entire stories
to print out, including Simon Lewis's title tale from last year's compilation,
Skin. "I am punctured and pffw! I deflate like a balloon and lie on
the floor until she picks me up and puts me in her collection." Site's
lack of imagination reflects the fiction, and the dust is settling on announcements
such as submission deadlines in Feb '96. A plus point, though, is the fascinating
list of banned books from Aristophanes Lysistrata to E for Ecstasy and attempts
to ban Net newsgroups.
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http://www.penguin.co.uk
To be recommended without reservation, the stylish design and classy
simplicity of Penguin's online presence perfectly encapsulates the company's
sense of Englishness, accessibility and quality, but with a lack of patronising
literary pretension. The formula of searchable catalogue, previewed titles,
mail order, company history, competition etc is now fairly familiar, although
an interesting twist encourages users to submit book reviews themselves.
A rich and rewarding online experience. Congratulations to all those involved,
including FutureNet!
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http://www.randomhouse.com/neanderthal/
Book-publishers Random House use this site to promote their new title
Ü a thriller called Neanderthal Ü with an online game. You're
in with a chance if you can crack the genetic code to validate whether a
fresh corpse is human or (shock horror!) a Neanderthal. So, what do you
win? A copy of the bookƒ now, there's a surprise. Links take you to
an anatomy chart depicting the differnce between a Neaderthal and a human
being\\\, information on Random House (equally entertaining, I'm sure),
or a chat with the author.
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http://www.visualradio.com/migraineboy
Having transcended Seattle's successful mag, Hype to grace the inner
sleeve of REM's 'Monster' LP as well as the pages of Spy, The Baffler and
The Village Voice, Greg Fiering's grumpy, gritted teeth creation, Migraine
Boy has graduated into a wonderfully bashful bundle of skewed boyhood logic.
These excellently presented strips, with winning wide-eyed RealAudio soundtrack
have all the cutsie, nostalgic, mixed-up-kidness of Peanuts combined with
a wickedly undercutting contemporary perspective. To the simply stated ""Let's
eat pop rocks and drink a bunch of coke,"" our frown-faced, baby
sore head says...""That's a stupid idea. How do you think I got
this headache?""
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http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/janeinfo.html
Widely acknowledged as the best Austen resource on the Net, this is
for enthusiastic fans and scholars alike. All of Northanger Abbey in ASCII
form; annotated, hypertexted versions of Pride and Prejudice; notes from
a recent conference on Mansfield Park, stuff about Clueless which, it has
been remarked, is a crypto-Emma; excerpts from essays and articles; a full
bibliography and heaps more. The appetite for Austen grows and grows. Keep
up.
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http://www.u-net.com/~bev/
Music doesn't have a monopoly over the arts in Manchester, at least
if the HayFever fiction site is anything to go by. The credits page stakes
a claim to the literary high ground, but it would be a shame if that deterred
anyone in search of a good read because the short stories are accessible
and really very entertaining. Poetry, on the other hand, is strictly a matter
of personal taste and as the editors themselves concede, it's something
people tend to write rather than read. However, with a title page which
delights in all manner of puns on the name hayfever and a free ads section
where you can plug anything at all, I say bless you hayFever!
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http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/voyager/
Set up to promote HarperCollins' Voyager science fiction book titles,
this site is presented as a weekly magazine covering the world of sci-fi
at large. The designers have avoided the sort of naff paintings adorning
many genre novels and gone for slick logos instead, with tasteful backgrounds
in shades of purple. However, with just three news stories each issue and
features which are little more than book extracts, the editorial side will
have to improve to make a return visit worthwhile.
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http://www.dillons.co.uk
Having a well established Internet access area in the store has obviously
benefited Dillons in London's Gower Street. The pages are well ordered by
section with a bit of blurb about each book and the recommended retail price
(in-store bargains are changed online). Ordering is easy and they'll giftwrap
your books for an extra pound. These pages also highlight some interesting
stuff like new novels, prize winners and special promotions.
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http://www.westfolk.org/
Yee-hah! Spawn of home page for the Western Folklife Centre, with audio-enhanced
and illustrated Cowboy Poets on the Internet. It features poets and other
artists ñwho keep the culture of the range alive and kicking.î
Token cowgirl Teresa Jordan joins fellow poets including third-generation
rancher Rod McQueary. Sample ditties like, ñIf life should be one
April day, I'll not pine for a morning lost/Nor mourn some teenage innocence.î
Links to the online shop, a Western radio show and examples of cowboy crafts,
such as ""ultimate brush buckaroo"" Randy Stowell's
rawhide art. ñHe makes twisted horsehair ropes and cinches, hackamores,
bosals, hobbles, headstalls and reatas.î Well, he would, wouldn't
he!
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http://www.cosmicvisions.com
In the pulp paperback tradition of fantastically far-fetched, 1950s
sci-fi, Cosmic Visions is a monthly fantasy-based fiction ezine publishing
short stories and serial thrillers. It manages to combine a reassuringly
old brand of monstered out plotlines with modern day sci-fi scenarios. Primarily
for the afficianado, a print copy of the magazine is available for download
in PDF format, so go get that Adobe Acrobat reader. The old classics are
reviewed alongside modern bodice-ripping mad science screams.
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http://www.comicsworld.com/
Comics are never kids stuff, especially since they started calling them
graphic novels, and the strong content, superb design and straightforward
attitude make ComicsWorld anything but sad. It's the sort of place where
you can find out about plans to reprint the rare original Duckman black
and white or that a Beatles comic book is in the pipeline. In-depth reviews,
interviews with top comic types like Neil Gaiman, articles and opinions,
too. Good value for comics fans.
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http://www.question.co.uk/ismcomics/
This is a must for anyone into mischievously offbeat and slightly screwy
comics, Ism showcases some of the best independent comic talent around at
the moment. From Will Allison's teen transvestite, Malcolm in the mini-manga
antics of The Pervert Club to Mark Greene's flatulent fun-and-gas-filled
shenanigans in Stinky Comics, the writing and drawings are all of a unique
and thrilling standard. Inevitably it is slow to load but truly, it is worth
the wait.
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http://www.csd.uu.se/~d94her/calvin/jumpstation.html
Exactly as described, the Calvin and Hobbes Jumpstation is a jumping
off point for many of the Calvin and Hobbes Web sites and archives that
exist on the Internet. Quite how creator, Bill Watterson, could attempt
to call in the copyright on all these sites is impossible to imagine, but
needless to say, there are few characters more popular on the Web than six-year-old
Calvin and his cuddly, cloth-eared, tearaway tiger pal, Hobbes.
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http://www.randomhouse.com/
Monster conglomerate publishing house, headed up by Harold Evans Ü
Random House has so many differnet divisions it's too big for its boots.
Navigating the site is a nightmare. You have to know what you're looking
for and head for the catalog search. Apart from big PR pushes and projects
like Seussville, which is Cat in the Hat Central, there's no way to check
on best-selling authors, the most popular paperbacks, crime novels or anything
like that. Inadvertently stumbled on Michael Crichton, but little else.
Poor show.
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http://www.bdd.com/
Featuring the combined strength of three affiliated publishing houses,
Bantam, Doubleday and Dell, this is, in essence, a really strong site. As
well as a catalogue, highlighted new releases and stuff on author tours
and appearances, there are areas focusing on some of their more well known
writers like John Grisham, Elmore Leonard, Isaac Asimov and Sara Paretsky.
You can mail them if you want. In addition there a couple of information
rich specialist forums - one for Star Wars and another for sci-fi in general
all with related Web links. It's likely that it'll be in these areas that
some of the more interesting, opinionated ideas will come. There are plenty
of puzzles and competitions to keep you amused as well.
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http://www.orma.co.uk/intabs.htm
Mail order firm offering a pretty comprehensive catalogue of books on
cassette. Email what you want but wait for your credit card details to be
taken over the phone.
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http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~jjuhne/COT/cot_home.html
This recently developed site supplements a growing number of places
entirely devoted to one boy and his quiff. There's nothing especially interesting
about the facts and figures here, except perhaps a chance to get in touch
with other Tintin fans. It's the links to the lists of issues at 'Welcome
to Marlinspike' and the great gifs at Sony.com that, all in all, make it
tops for Tintin trivia.
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http://www.mindspring.com/~walter/mystzone.html
Magazine devoted entirely to mystery, suspense and crime fiction. Kind
of conventional and less interested in some of the classier American urban
crime novels, it nevertheless has a handful of reviews, '50s pulp fiction
first edition covers and links to other online criminal activity.
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http://www.iw.net/~mind/Review/index.html
This quarterly, independent book review magazine continues to maintain
a commitment to the old-fashioned printed page. The online version reproduces
the original's woodcut artwork, as well as high quality reviews and essays
from some of America's finest writers. Read.
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http://www.demon.co.uk/ulysses-books/index.html
Quite an eclectic mix of books can be found at Ulysses, as it seems
to specialise in rare and out-of-print travel books, 20th century fiction
and poetry first editions, as well as illustrated books ie. anything from
'Everest The Hard Way' to The Selected Poems of Ted Hughes. A treasure trove.
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http://www.easynet.co.uk/compbook.htm
Still looking for that difficult-to-find book on C programming or that
tome on Mortal Kombat? Then look no further. Here you can browse or search
the thousands of titles on offer, plus videos and software. Orders can be
emailed and will be dealt with in a couple of working days.
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http://www.cnu.edu/~patrick/taoism/suntzu/suntzu.html
Discover Sun Tzu's The Art of War with or without a guide. At 2400 years
old, it's believed to be the world's oldest military treatise. Like other
Chinese wisdoms such as the teachings of Confusius, much of it still rings
true and its adages can be applied to any conflict. So much so, that it
became the Yuppie's surrogate bible. Oh well, battles do have their casualties.
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http://SLEEPY.USU.EDU/~slq9v/cslewis/index.html
Dedicated to the wonderful Chronicles of Narnia children's books and
their author, CS Lewis. There is biographical information, a comprehensive
bibliography, sound clips and excellent pics, plus details of the CS Lewis
mailing list and the #Narnia IRC channel. Lovingly maintained, this site
is for fans and scholars alike Ü magical.
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http://www.blackwell.co.uk/bookshops/
Oxford's big famous bookshop now has a site on the Web. It is fantastically
user-friendly because choosing books is just like browsing through them
in the store and, naturally, it's possible to search using title, author,
publisher or ISBN.
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http://www.nhbs.co.uk
A specialist mail order environmental bookstore with over 40.000 titles,
the service is searchable by subject and geographical area as well as title
or author. Perfect for browsing if you're into botany or even marine biology,
geology, ornithology or palaeontology...and so on.
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http://www.bogo.co.uk/limetree
Although it is possible to order any British book in print, Lime Tree
actually offers a concise, non-searchable selection of new titles. Among
the choice of biography, novels and non-fiction, there are a limited number
of signed first editions for true bibliophiles.
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http://www.thomson.com
International Thomson Publishing is something of a giant. As the world's
second largest English language publishing group in the areas of science,
engineering, technology, business, medicine, humanities, social sciences
and defence, what it has to offer is a load of information - a searchable
database of more than 20000 books and links to related discussion groups
and newsletter lists.
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Gopher to:
ftp.std.com/00/obi/book/Mischief/tbbom15.txt
How to build your own explosive devices, rockets, cannons and pyrotechnic
displays, using easily found chemicals and implements. It's a large file,
so if your browser won't load it, FTP to ftp.std.com and download it from
there.
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Gopher: gopher.well.sf.ca.us/00/Business/catalog.asc
It's best to save this long, single page catalogue as a text file, and
read it off line. It's crammed with reviews and ordering details of subversive,
strange and even downright nasty gems of anarchic and alternative writing.
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http://www.vmedia.com/
Order online from Ventana's range of popular computer texts, or download
programs from its companion disks. There's also a useful software archive
of DTP, Internet and AutoCAD shareware.
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http://www.clark.net/pub/atomicbk/home.html
The bizzaro director John Waters recommends this Baltimore shop for
its insane books about every kind of extreme. He says it's just like his
own library. It's also a great place to order such oddities online.
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http://www.bookshop.co.uk/
It claims to be the biggest online bookstore in the world, with over
750,000 titles available from a myriad of publishers such as Penguin, McGraw
Hill, Butterworths and Oxford Press. And that's without including all the
other bookstores it's linked to. All are cross-referenced by subject, with
brief synopsises and links to related material. Some are available through
its central ordering mechanism and others direct from their publishers.
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http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/ab96/
Buy directly from Wyvern's online business book catalogue.
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http://www.mcp.com/
The Macmillan USA Information SuperLibrary goes further than most publishers,
by not only providing a searchable titlebase, new releases and discounted
email order, but by putting searchable contents pages and full chapter samples
for many of its thousands of books online. What's more, you can download
copies of any software included with their computer titles, here or from
their FTP site.
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http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/lf/Laissez-Faire.html
Laissez-Faire has been a source of libertarian books and tapes for twenty
years. It offers titles by the likes of Ayn Rand, Thomas Jefferson,Ludwig
von Mises, P.J. O'Rourke, Milton Friedman, Thomas Szasz and of course, Adam
Smith, on topics like education, drug policy, gun control, objectivism,
free marketeering, economics and humour. You can email order from anywhere
in the world.
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http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/People/spok/banned-books.html
This exhibit of controversial books is presented by Carnegie Mellon
University, where the administration recently removed more than 80 sex newsgroups,
a matter still contested by the students. You can find out which books have
been banned or come under attack, and why. Some titles like the evil Tom
Sawyer include contentious extracts. Many will regard some of these titles
as essential reading.
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http://www.demon.co.uk/keganpaul/
Another dreadfully slow Demon site, but we're told things will speed
up soon. This major educational publisher is making its entire catalogue
available for international mail order and it specialises in works on and
from the Middle East, Africa, Japan and Asia. There are also some interesting
snippets of news from these regions.
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http://www.elsevier.nl
Elsevier claim to be the world's leading supplier of scientific information.
On board is a comprehensive list of journals, publications and multimedia
products, plus news of forthcoming releases, along with reviews and ordering
facilities. Links include an excellent science Gopher and the WWW 94 conference
proceedings at CERN.
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http://futfan.com/home.html
The Future Fantasy Bookstore specialises in fantasy, horror, science
fiction and mystery books. You can browse in the store, get samples of old
and new material, and look at the exotic cover art associated with this
type of literature. At present the bookstore is not accepting payment via
the Net for security reasons, but expect it to introduce an online service
in the near future. The store can be emailed at futfan@netcom.com
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