Free Reading for Hugo Voters

John Scalzi has announced that Tor is letting him give away for free his Hugo-nominated novel Old Man's War and Robert Charles Wilson's similarly Hugo-nominated Spin as non-DRMed electronic texts. You do need to be a member of LA Con IV, this year's Worldcon, to qualify, though. (That makes sense, since the point is to make the books available to Hugo voters, and only members of the convention can vote.) This means that means three of the five nominated novels are now freely available to Hugo voters, since Charles Stross's Accelerando is available to anyone electronically under a Creative Commons license. (That one is available to anyone -- and, if you haven't read Stross yet for monetary reasons, do yourself a favor and check it out.)

There are also a few of the short fiction nominees available for free; the official page on the LA Con IV website has the links. And I bet some more of them will become available before the voting deadline; it's becoming quite common these days.

I have no idea if any of this affects any of the voting, but it does mean that no one has to pay to read good SF these days. (Though, if you want good SF to continue appearing, you should find a way to pay the writers you like.)