This is a heck of a package that is heavy on the classics: Roger Zelazny, George R.R. Martin’s Wildcards, Alfred Bester, Isaac Asimov! In the case of Zelazny, it has both short story collections and the third series of Amber books that were written by John Gregor Betancourt, which I haven’t read. I started reading Zelazny’ The Last Defender of Camelot, and I’m so happy that I did because I had forgotten what an incredible wordsmith that he was. I was re-reading his Amber series last year and I honestly don’t think that it represents his best work, but people will like what they will like.
(personally I copy them in to Dropbox and can load and read them from my desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet)
The bundle is available for both Kindle and ePub formats, is DRM-free, and is available for the next eleven days, so basically through the end of the month. The charities for this bundle help support SFWA’s The Givers Fund, the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, and the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital’s Extra Life fund. Currently the highest tier for all the books is only $15.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/scificlassics_bookbundle
This bundle is more oriented towards video games, which is fine, it’s just not my particular field of interest (at the moment). But it does contain one excellent book that is within my interests: Mike Selinker’s Kobald Guide To Board Game Design. This is a book of essays by well-known game designers, such as Selinker himself, James Ernest (Cheapass Games), Richard Garfield (Magic the Gathering), Jeff Tidball (Pieces of Eight, Cthulhu 500), Matt Forbeck (Marvel Heroes Battle Dice, Brave New World and Lord of the Rings RPGs), Lisa Steenson (Lords of Vegas, Key Largo, Pirates of the Spanish Main), Andrew Looney (Fluxx, et al), and many others. LOTS of good information on many aspects of board game design, including what makes a good gateway game, how lessons from film making can help design games, personal reflections on trials and tribulations, observations about how to build prototypes, etc. I thought Andrew Looney’s flowchart on how he creates games was an excellent reflection on a good methodology. He also suggests using lab books for jotting notes and observations. It was quite interesting to learn that not only is his background in computer programming, but that some of his code is on the Hubble Space Telescope. That is quite awesome.
Available for the next 18 days.
https://storybundle.com/games
High Altitude Game Design 