Back in the heyday of my blogging, I did a review of a Kim Stanley Robinson story called The Lucky Strike – a classic what-if alternate history that imagined a different development of the bombing of Hiroshima.
A good story, with a strong anti-war theme and message.
Some comments on my Italian blog were scathing, to say the least: war is good, bombing Hiroshima was a great idea, thing could never have worked any other way, who’s this Kim Stanley Robinson chap anyway?

It was very instructive.

The story The Lucky Strike was published in a small volume with a dark red back, in a series called Outspoken Authors. The volume included not just the story, but also extra material, an interview with the author and more.
I said to myself I’d have to check out more books in that series.

Years have passed, and these days if I want to read, I have to rely on gifts from my friends and readers (thanks, guys!), my meagre affiliate market revenue on Amazon (I use those funds to complete my Gundam Origin collection), special offers and used books (always a source of wonders) and book bundles.

And this month’s Story Bundle is offering 23 volumes in the Outspoken Authors series, for 15 bucks. And I bought it for myself, as a personal Christmas gift for a year, so far, well played. As it usually happens, 10% of the proceeds go to a charity, this time providing books for prison inmates.

In case you are wondering, here’s a complete list of the books, that are provided both as mobi and epub, DRM-free…

• Thoreau’s Microscope by Michael Blumlein
• A City Made of Words by Paul Park
• The Beatrix Gates by Rachel Pollack
• Totalitopia by John Crowley
• Raising Hell by Norman Spinrad
• Modem Times 2.0 by Michael Moorcock
• The Atheist in the Attic by Samuel R. Delany
• Fire. by Elizabeth Hand
• Miracles Ain’t What They Used to Be by Joe R. Lansdale
• Gypsy by Carter Scholz
• My Life, My Body by Marge Piercy
• Patty Hearst & The Twinkie Murders by Paul Krassner
• The Science of Herself by Karen Joy Fowler
• New Taboos by John Shirley
• The Human Front by Ken Macleod
• Report From Planet Midnight by Nalo Hopkinson
• Surfing the Gnarl by Rudy Rucker
• The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow by Cory Doctorow
• The Wild Girls by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason
• The Underbelly by Gary Phillips
• The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Left Left Behind by Terry Bisson

Impressive, right?
Each volume includes the titular story, plus interviews, essays and lecture transcripts, and other meta-text contents by the story author.
This is good.
So, in case you are interested, for yourself or as a gift to someone special, this is the link to the bundle. The offer ends on Christmas.