If you're looking for something old to restore, here's something I started - restoring one of the very earliest pieces of science fiction. This is "The Sky Pirate", by Garrett P. Serviss, better known for "Edison's Conquest of Mars". That one was intended as an unauthorized sequel to H.G. Wells's 1987 "War of the Worlds".
"The Sky Pirate" was serialized in newspapers, and never published as a book. I brought back the first 3 chapters from Library of Congress scans of microfilms of newspapers from 2011. The Library of Congress ran those through an OCR program. The result needs much cleanup.
Here's the first chapter, cleaned up.[1] Here's the prologue:
"The sea pirate has long been a fascinating figure of romance, but the march of progress has driven him into well deserved retirement, and he has now been replaced, in fiction at least, by the sky pirate, who is even more mysterious, more daring and more romantic than his predecessor. Read and there will unfold before you the extraordinary story of Captain Alfonso Payton and his airship, the Chameleon; of William Grayman, the richest man in the world; of his beautiful daughter, for whose ransom $10,000,000 was demanded; of Lieutenant Allen of the revenue service, of wonders by wireless and of fierce battles above the clouds."
It gets worse. The writing is terrible. The plot is lame. The characters are one-dimensional. I got through seven chapters before quitting in disgust. There's a reason that nobody, in a century, ever republished this.
So I put it on Github.[2] After 110 years, it's clearly public domain. If someone wants to finish the job, fork the project on Github and go for it. Thanks.
Thank you for sharing this, it was a fun comment to read. The effort itself is commendable and I understand why you would leave the remaining work for others.
For some reason the prose reminds me of Allan Quatermain, which was a book I just couldn't get through.
"The Sky Pirate" was serialized in newspapers, and never published as a book. I brought back the first 3 chapters from Library of Congress scans of microfilms of newspapers from 2011. The Library of Congress ran those through an OCR program. The result needs much cleanup.
Here's the first chapter, cleaned up.[1] Here's the prologue:
"The sea pirate has long been a fascinating figure of romance, but the march of progress has driven him into well deserved retirement, and he has now been replaced, in fiction at least, by the sky pirate, who is even more mysterious, more daring and more romantic than his predecessor. Read and there will unfold before you the extraordinary story of Captain Alfonso Payton and his airship, the Chameleon; of William Grayman, the richest man in the world; of his beautiful daughter, for whose ransom $10,000,000 was demanded; of Lieutenant Allen of the revenue service, of wonders by wireless and of fierce battles above the clouds."
It gets worse. The writing is terrible. The plot is lame. The characters are one-dimensional. I got through seven chapters before quitting in disgust. There's a reason that nobody, in a century, ever republished this.
So I put it on Github.[2] After 110 years, it's clearly public domain. If someone wants to finish the job, fork the project on Github and go for it. Thanks.
[1] https://github.com/John-Nagle/Sky-Pirate/blob/master/src/cha...
[2] https://github.com/John-Nagle/Sky-Pirate