Search Results for: masterworks

Curiosity was discouraged in the Greene tribe. Its members lived out their lives in cramped Quarters, hacking away at the encroaching ponics. As to where they were – that was forgotten.

Roy Complain decides to find out. With the renegade priest Marapper, he moves into unmapped territory, where they make a series of discoveries which turn their universe upside-down …

Non-Stop is the classic SF novel of discovery and exploration; a brilliant evocation of a familiar setting seen through the eyes of a primitive.

John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. But he was also the last of the Centaurans – or at least, half of him was – which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which might hold the key to settling a vicious space war.

M. John Harrison’s classic novel turns the conventions of space opera on their head, and is written with the precision and brilliance for which is famed.

The definitive collection of Conan stories, featuring the most distinctive and well known fantasy hero of all time

Conan the Cimmerian: he rose from boy-thief and mercenary to become king of Aquilonia. Neither supernatural fiends nor demonic sorcery could oppose the barbarian warrior as he wielded his mighty sword and dispatched his enemies to a bloody doom on the battlefields of the legendary Hyborian Age.

Collected together for the first time anywhere in the world, in chronological order, are all Robert E. Howard’s definitive stories of Conan, exactly as he wrote them, as fresh, atmospheric and vibrant today as when they were first published in the pulp magazines more than sixty years ago.

In Viriconium, the young men whistle to one another all night long as they go about their deadly games. If you wake suddenly, you might hear footsteps running, or an urgent sigh. After a minute or two, the whistles move away in the direction of the Tinmarket or the Margarethestrasse. The next day, some lordling is discovered in the gutter with his throat cut. Who can tell fantasy from reality, magic from illusion, hero from villain, man from monster … in Viriconium?

Published here for the first time in one volume, and in the author’s preferred order, are all the Viriconium stories, originally published in four books: The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium and Viriconium Nights.

One of the most influential science-fantasy worlds ever envisaged, which inspired a generation of writers including George R.R. Martin

The fourth in the Fantasy Masterworks series, the Dying Earth saga inspired writers like Michael Moorcock and Gene Wolfe, who freely acknowledges his debt to Vance in his own Book of the New Sun.

Here, in one volume, is Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jack Vance’s classic Dying Earth saga comprising The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel’s Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous. Travel to a far distant future, when the sun bleeds red in a dark sky, where magic and science is one, and the Earth has but a few short decades to live …

Read what everyone is saying about The Tales of the Dying Earth:

‘He was, in a single paragraph, able to sketch the most incredible cultures and societies . . . he’d outline a world as interesting as all of Dune. And he did it again and again and again’ Christopher Paolini, New York Times bestselling author of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

‘Absolutely amazing! I’ve never read anything quite like Vance’s Dying Earth stories . . . very witty and full of sarcasm . . . Even if you’re not a fantasy fan you should read these stories‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘This is one of the best series EVER WRITTEN and the world created by Jack Vance is as good as anything I have ever read . . . HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Within a few pages, I was completely drawn in, and there was simply no escape for me . . . This omnibus volume is the perfect way to experience everything about the Dying Earth‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Almost singlehandedly defined an entire sub-genre of SF and Fantasy . . . the Dying Earth quartet is doubtless a masterpiece‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Vance has got to be one of the greatest writers I have ever read, and quite probably the greatest stylist . . . as soon as I started reading each novel in the book, I couldn’t stop’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Awesome . . . a surreal fantasy setting on our own world, surrounded by crumbled civilisations and overlooked by a sun that could blink out at any moment’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Jack Vance’s masterwork of fantasy novellas and novelettes. Read once, read twice, read again. A powerful imagination in top form. This book is one of the main reasons that I love the fantasy genre‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The award-winning account of a man changed beyond all recognition so that he can be part of a bold experiment to live on Mars

Ill luck made Roger Torraway the subject of the Man Plus Programme, but it was deliberate biological engineering which turned him into a monster – a machine perfectly adapted to survive on Mars. For according to computer predictions, Mars is humankind’s only alternative to extinction. But beneath his monstrous exterior, Torraway still carries a man’s capacity for suffering.

1588: Queen Elizabeth is felled by an assassin’s bullet. Within the week, the Spanish Armada had set sail, and its victory changed the course of history.

1968: England is still dominated by the Church of Rome. There are no telephones, no television, no nuclear power. As Catholicism and the Inquisition tighten their grip, rebellion is growing.

The year is 1998, the world is a growing nightmare of desperation, of uncontrollable pollution and increasing social unrest. In Cambridge, two scientists experiment with tachyons – subatomic particles that travel faster than the speed of light and, therefore, according to the Theory of Relativity, may move backwards in time. Their plan is to signal a warning to the previous generation.

In 1962, a young Californian scientist, Gordon Bernstein, finds his experiments are being spoiled by unknown interference. As he begins to suspect something near the truth it becomes a race against time – the world is collapsing and will only be saved if Gordon can decipher the message in time.

Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1980
Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for best novel, 1981
Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1980

Four students discover a manuscript, The Book of Skulls, which reveals the existence of a sect, now living in the Arizona desert, whose members can offer immortality to those who can complete its initiation rite.

To their surprise, they discover that the sect exists, and is willing to accept them as acolytes. But for each group of four who enter the rite, two must die in order for the others to succeed.

Far in the future, the craftsmen of the distant planet Halma create goods which are the wonder of the galaxy. But they know little of this. Their society is harshly regimented, its religion austere and unforgiving, and primitive – to maintain standards, even the most basic use of automation is punishable by death.

When Amiante, a wood-carver, is executed for processing old documents with a camera, his son Ghyl rebels, and decides to bring down the system. To do so, he must first interpret the story of Emphyrio, an ancient hero of Halman legend.

All alone: an idiot boy, a runaway girl, a severely retarded baby, and twin girls with a vocabulary of two words between them. Yet once they are mysteriously drawn together this collection of misfits becomes something very, very different from the rest of humanity.

This intensely written and moving novel is an extraordinary vision of humanity’s next step.

Mars is a desolate world. Largely forgotten by Earth, the planet remains helpless in the stranglehold of Arnie Kott, who as boss of the plumber’s union has a monopoly over the vital water supply.

Arnie Kott is obsessed by the past; the native Bleekmen, poverty-stricken wanderers, can see into the future; while to Manfred, an autistic boy, time apparently stops. When one of the colonists, Norbert Steiner, commits suicide, the repercussions are startling and bizarre.

In the year 2301, guns are only museum pieces and benign telepaths sweep the minds of the populace to detect crimes before they happen. In 2301 murder is virtually impossible, but one man is about to change that …

Ben Reich, a psychopathic business magnate, has devised the ultimate scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the order of his society. The Demolished Man is a masterpiece of imaginative suspense, set in a superbly imagined world in which everything has changed except the ancient instinct for murder.

In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence.

Eventually he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, living like their pioneer ancestors, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.

A poignant novel about finding a new normal after the upheaval of a global crisis.

One moment a man sits on a suburban hill, gazing curiously at the stars. The next, he is whirling through the firmament, and perhaps the most remarkable of all science fiction journeys has begun.

Even Stapledon’s other great work, LAST AND FIRST MEN, pales in ambition next to STAR MAKER, which presents nothing less than an entire imagined history of life in the universe, encompassing billions of years.

One of the most extraordinary, imaginative and ambitious novels of the century: a history of the evolution of humankind over the next 2 billion years.

Among all science fiction writers Olaf Stapledon stands alone for the sheer scope and ambition of his work. First published in 1930, Last and First Men is full of pioneering speculations about evolution, terraforming, genetic engineering and many other subjects.

Trapped in 1877, a historian writes an account of an alternate history of America in which the South won the Civil War.

Living in this alternate timeline, he was determined to change events at Gettysburg. When he’s offered the chance to return to that fateful turning point his actions change history as he knows it, leaving him in an all too familiar past.

Clarke’s masterful evocation of the far future of humanity, considered his finest novel

Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar. For millennia its protective dome shut out the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rule the stars.

But then, as legend has it, the invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, a Unique, to break through Diaspar’s stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.

In the tradition of the greatest cyberpunk novels, Blood Music explores the imminent destruction of mankind and the fear of mass destruction by technological advancements.

Blood Music follows present-day events in which the fears concerning the nuclear annihilation of the world subsided after the Cold War and the fear of chemical warfare spilled over into the empty void of nuclear fear. An amazing breakthrough in genetic engineering made by Vergil Ulam is considered too dangerous for further research, but rather than destroy his work, he injects himself with his creation and walks out of his lab, unaware of just quite how his actions will change the world.

Author Greg Bear’s treatment of the traditional tale of scientific hubris is both suspenseful and a compelling portrait of a new intelligence emerging amongst us, irrevocably changing our world.

The second volume, completing the definitive collection of Conan stories, featuring the most distinctive and well-known fantasy hero of all time

Conan the Cimmerian: he rose from boy-thief and mercenary to become king of Aquilonia. Neither supernatural fiends nor demonic sorcery could oppose the barbarian warrior as he wielded his mighty sword and dispatched his enemies to a bloody doom on the battlefields of the legendary Hyborian Age.

Collected together for the first time anywhere in the world, in chronological order, are all Robert E. Howard’s definitive stories of Conan, exactly as he wrote them – as fresh, atmospheric and vibrant today as when they were first published in the pulp magazines more than sixty years ago.

One of Clarke’s most famous and acclaimed novels, winner of both the HUGO AWARD and the NEBULA AWARD

In the 22nd century visionary scientist Vannevar Morgan conceives the most grandiose engineering project of all time, and one which will revolutionize the future of humankind of space: a Space Elevator, 36,000 kilometres high, anchored to an equatorial island in the Indian Ocean.

Winner of the HUGO AWARD for best novel, 1980
Winner of the NEBULA AWARD for best novel, 1979

Roderick is a robot and this is his autobiography. Sladek conveys, with great sensitivity and insight the innocence of an artificial intelligence and asks profound questions about mankind’s right to manipulate others. It also portrays how a numerological mind might structure a narrative.

Inventive, funny yet melancholy this is one of SF’s greatest creative geniuses writing at his thought-provoking best.

From the moment when they first met, in the commission of the same, audacious theft, Fafhrd, the giant barbarian warrior from the Cold Waste, and the Gray Mouser, master thief, novice wizard and expert swordsman, felt no ordinary affinity.

Forged over the gleam of sharpened steel as, back to back, they faced their foes, theirs was a friendship that would take them from adventure to misadventure across all of Nehwon, from the caves of the inner earth to the waves of the outer sea. But it was in the dark alleys and noisome back streets of the great fog-shrouded city of Lankhmar that they became legends.

THE FIRST BOOK OF LANKHMAR includes the first four volumes of the hugely enjoyable Swords series.

The Road can go Anywhere.

The Road can go Anywhen.

Almost.

Red Dorakeen has been on the Road for a very long time. For all of time, in fact. It stretches infinitely into the future and past, with exits that take him wherever, or whenever, he wants to go.

But he can’t find the place he wants to be.

He’s not the only one who can travel the Road, and as people join and leave, they can alter the past, or the future, to suit their whims. Exits close off, become overgrown, and working out what to change back to return to old timelines could take, well . . . forever.


Fortunately, Red has all the time he could ever need.


Roadmarks is a fantastically mind-bending novel from one of SFF’s most influential authors. It weaves together linear and non-linear narratives in a compelling tale full of mystery and magic.