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I don't know if anyone else still has a Rocket E-Book, but I've still got mine, and every so often I would google the old girl, only, over the years, to find less and less trace that she was ever out there, helping bookworms to develop their upper body strength... From time to time I even used it - for example to read the online Doctor Who books the BBC has been so generous to make available in the past.

It was thanks to the Rocket eBook that Silver Age Books went from being the one-off publisher of Professor Challenger in Space to being an ongoing project. If I remember correctly, Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting! was uploaded to the online Rocket Library within an hour or two of being written. It wasn't long after that, though, that the Rocket Library was shut down - flagrant copyright violations aside, the company that bought Nuvomedia didn't see much point in encouraging people to download free books. What a shame: Nuvomedia were really ahead of the times in recognising the potential of user-generated content.

And so, in tribute to the light that died, when there was time to do the conversions, we occasionally made issues of our magazines available in the Rocket eBook format.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #9 (Rocket eBook version)

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #25 (Rocket eBook version)

But these are exciting times for eBooks! New devices like the Kindle and the Sony Reader are getting everyone excited about them all over again! My Rocket eBook is no longer a relic of a future that never was: it's now a trailblazer! (Plus I've realised how useful it is for reading submissions to TQF.) We can't possibly convert our publications into every single format,* but here's an html version that you should be able to pass on to your Kindle or Sony Reader:

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #25 (zipped html version)

* Well, what do you know, now we can! Take a look at Feedbooks, where you'll find many issues available for free download in many different formats!

But what about my Rocket eBook using brethren? Well, you can use stuff from Feedbooks too!

1. Install the following software on your PC: eBook Publisher (needed for Mobi2Imp to work), Mobi2Imp, and the Rocket Librarian (if you don't already have it).
2. Download the publication you want from Feedbooks in Mobi format.
3. Run it through Mobi2Imp.
4. Add the .rb file to your Rocket eBook using the Rocket Librarian.

NB: at the time of writing, the Rocket Librarian seems to regard .rb files output from Mobi2Imp as being all the same book, and so each one you do overwrites the previous one. If that's still a problem, use the Rocket Librarian to create the .rb book yourself, by importing the html file left behind by the Mobi2Imp process.

Out of interest, if anyone else needs to get pdfs on to their Rocket eBook (or if I forget how to do it), here's one fairly reliable way of doing it:

1. Install the following software on your PC: Mobipocket Creator, eBook Publisher (needed for Mobi2Imp to work), Mobi2Imp, and the Rocket Librarian (if you don't already have it).
2. Import the pdf into Mobipocket Creator. Preview and then edit the html if necessary.
3. Still in Mobipocket Creator, build a .mobi ebook.
4. Run that .mobi file through Mobi2Imp.
5. Add the .rb file to your Rocket eBook using the Rocket Librarian.

There are quicker ways of doing this (you could just save from the pdf into Word, or import the html created by Mobipocket Creator into the Rocket Librarian), but following this process seems to give the best results.

NB: at the time of writing, the Rocket Librarian seems to regard .rb files output from Mobi2Imp as being all the same book, and so each one you do overwrites the previous one. If that's still a problem, use the Rocket Librarian to create the .rb book yourself, by importing the html file left behind by the Mobi2Imp process.