Search Results for: masterworks

Thomas Jerome Newton is an extraterrestrial from the planet Anthea, which has been devastated by a series of nuclear wars, and whose inhabitants are twice as intelligent as human beings.

When he lands on Earth – in Kentucky, disguised as a human – it’s with the intention of saving his own people from extinction. Newton patents some very advanced Anthean technology, which he uses to amass a fortune. He begins to build a spaceship to help the last 300 Antheans migrate to Earth.

Meanwhile, Nathan Bryce, a chemistry professor in Iowa, is intrigued by some of the new products Newton’s company brings to the market, and already suspects Newton of being an alien.

As Bryce and the FBI close in, Newton finds his own clarity and sense of purpose diminishing.

Inspiring adaptations starring David Bowie and Chiwetel Ejiofor, The Man Who Fell To Earth brought Walter Tevis wide recognition and critical acclaim. It was nominated for the Hugo award, and the 1976 film was nominated for the Nebula, Saturn and Hugo awards.

‘Beautiful science fiction’ – New York Times
‘This is one of the finest science fiction novels of its period’ – J.R. Dunn
‘Tevis writes . . . with power and poetry and tension’ – Washington Post

Welcome to The Best Of The Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction

Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction



When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour.


But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will be. He knows, for instance, that his wife is going to Mars to mate with Malachi Constant, the richest man in the world. He also knows that on Titan – one of Saturn’s moons – is an alien from the planet Tralfamadore, who has been waiting 200,000 years for a spare part for his grounded spacecraft . . .

A finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award, The Sirens of Titan was Vonnegut’s second novel. It received wide acclaim, and played with ideas of free will and predestination, themes he continued to explore in his later works. In 2015, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.


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‘The Sirens of Titan is marvellous. It’s so funny it made me want to cry’ – Infinity Plus
‘A classic, ripe with wit and eloquence and a cascade of inventiveness’ – Brian Aldiss
‘His best book . . . He dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it’ – Esquire

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin.

For the humans now settling the Amarantin homeworld, it’s of little more than academic interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect city and a colossal statue of a winged Amarantin.

For brilliant, ruthless scientist Dan Sylveste, it’s more than merely intellectual curiosity – and he will stop at nothing to get at the truth. Even if it costs him everything.

But the Amarantin were wiped out for a reason, and that danger is closer and greater than even Syveste imagines . . .

The original novel in the epic series, Revelation Space was nominated for both the BSFA and Arthur C. Clarke awards. Reynolds’ PhD in astronomy and experience with the ESA means that his space operas present hard science spins on intergalactic adventures and have impacted SF for years.

‘The stories in the Revelation Space universe are packed with mind-expanding ideas . . . all of which keeps you coming back for more gripping excitement’ – Kirkus
‘Reynolds’s vision of a future dominated by artificial intelligence trembles with the ultimate cold of the dark between the stars’ – Publishers Weekly
‘Along with Iain M Banks, Reynolds is perhaps the most successful British Space Opera author of his generation’ – Encyclopedia of Science Fiction


Welcome to The Best Of The Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction

Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction

Arthur Dent thought his day was going badly when someone tried to demolish his house.


Then someone demolished his planet.


Rescued by his friend Ford – who is not a human from Guilford, but an alien from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse – Arthur is flung into an adventure among the stars. He will face aliens, robots, world-builders, and that girl he quite fancied who turned him down at a party one time. All in the name of research for the greatest book in the galaxy.



He just has to remember not to panic.

Part of the multi-media phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is beloved the world over. Douglas Adams’ ‘trilogy in five parts’ originated as a radio show, developed into a book series, and has since spawned a TV series, a film, additional sequels and expanded radio series, a famously impossible video game, and a number of stage shows. It was a Sunday Times bestseller, and ranked fourth in a 2003 BBC poll to find the Nation’s Best-Loved Book.


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‘Douglas Adams’s inspired melding of hippy-trail guidebook and sci-fi comedy turned its novelisations into a publishing phenomenon’ – Guardian


‘In a sense that only time can test, it could be said that the Hitchhiker’s Guide has become folklore’ – The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction


‘Douglas was a genius, and that’s not actually a word I toss around very lightly or use very much’ – Neil Gaiman

The chronicles of The Winter of the World echo down the ages in half-remembered myth and song – tales of mysterious powers of the Mastersmiths, of the forging of great weapons, of the subterranean kingdoms of the duergar, of Gods who walked abroad, and of the Powers that struggled endlessly for dominion.

In the Northlands, beleaguered by the ever-encroaching Ice and the marauding Ekwesh, a young cowherd, saved from the raiders by the mysterious Mastersmith, discovers in himself an uncanny power to shape metal – but it is a power that may easily be turned to evil ends, and on a dreadful night he flees his new home, and embarks on the quest to find both his own destiny, and a weapon that will let him stand against the Power of the Ice.

His wanderings will bring him great friends but earn him greater enemies, and eventually they will transform him from lowly cowherd to a mastersmith fit to stand with the greatest of all men.

To the residents of Abalone, Arizona, a sleepy southwestern town whose chief concern is surviving the Great Depression, the arrival of a circus in town is a chance to forget their woes for a while. But this is the circus of Dr. Lao and instead of relief, the townsfolk are confronted with an array creature seemingly straight out of mythology: a chimera, a Medusa, a sphinx, a sea serpent and, of course, the elusive, ever-changing Dr. Lao. As the circus unfolds, it spins events towards a climactic final act that will change the lives of Abalone’s residents for ever.

When the mysterious, beautiful Elleander Morning travels through time to Vienna in 1913, her aim is not to visit the birthplace of Schubert and Strauss. Instead, she has come to assassinate a struggling young artist. His name: Adolf Hitler.

But 60 years on, long after Elleander has changed the path of the world, a mysterious book – the history of a terrible, global war that never was – threatens to unravel reality. As the horrific past – a past that never happened – begins to reassert itself, billions of lives lie in the balance . . .

A magnificent reworking of the Sleeping Beauty story by a master storyteller

On her 16th birthday, the princess Beauty sidesteps the sleeping curse placed upon her by her wicked aunt, the fairy Carabosse – only to be kidnapped by visitors from another time and place, far from the picturesque castle in 14th-century England.

She is taken to the world of the future, a savage society where, even amongst the teeming billions, she is utterly alone. And as she travels magically to places both imaginary and real, Beauty eventually comes to understand her special place in humanity’s destiny.

Captivating, uncompromising and unforgettable, BEAUTY will carve its own unique place in the hearts and minds of readers.

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.

In the second century AD, a Greek nobleman is travelling and living abroad in Germany while carrying on an affair with a military man’s wife. When discovered, he takes an emergency business trip to save his life and packs amongst his belongings certain items that lead the people he encounters to think him a Norse God, a fortuitous point of view which he does little to dispel. Forced to keep up the pretence of being a god while staying one step ahead of his lover’s jealous husband, Photinus must juggle the severity of his situation with the enjoyment of being a god.

Published here with its sequel, NOT FOR ALL THE GOLD IN IRELAND and companion volume MEN WENT TO CATTREATH, VOTAN is one of the highpoints of modern fantasy.

In a land where wizards have long since vanished, Morgon, Prince of Hed, is confronted with a challenge much different from that faced by his land-bound predecessors. Although he wants only to rule and work the land of his birth, Morgon must search out a very different destiny – one dictated since birth by the mark of three stars imprinted on his forehead.

He must wander strange, foreign lands full of untamed magic in the form of riddling wraiths, mysterious harpists, a lost crown, a magical sword and an all-knowing High One who rules over all. In his quest for a new life for himself and his people, he must face great dangers – not only to himself but to his promised bride, his land and his very way of life . . .

This volume contains The Riddle-Master of Hed, Heir of Sea and Fire and Hugo and World Fantasy Award-shortlisted Harpist in the Wind – the complete Riddle-Master trilogy, which is among the most respected and popular fantasies of recent years.

Welcome to a world where the Plantagenet kings survived, the laws of magic were discovered and the physical sciences never pursued. In the resulting Anglo-French Empire, a detective like Lord Darcy needs more than a keen mind and an observant eye. Luckily, Darcy can call on the aid of Master Sean O’Lochlainn, forensic sorcerer.

This omnibus contains all of the Lord Darcy stories as well as the only Lord Darcy novel, TOO MANY MAGICIANS, and has a new introduction by Michael Dirda.

There is more than one history of the world. Before science defined the modern age, other powers, wondrous and magical, once governed the universe, their lore perfected within a lost capital of hieroglyphs, wizard-kings, and fabulous monuments.

In the 1970s, a historian named Pierce Moffett moves to the New England countryside to write a book about Ægypt, driven by an idea he dare not believe: that the physical laws of the universe once changed and may change again. Yet the notion is not his alone. Something waits at the locked estate of Fellowes Kraft, author of romances about Will Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno and Dr. John Dee, something for which Pierce and those near him have long sought without knowing it: a key, perhaps, to Ægypt …

Shortlisted for the WORLD FANTASY and ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDs.

When Brian Duffy, an ageing soldier of fortune, is recruited in Venice by a strange old man to work as a bouncer in Vienna at an inn where the fabulous Herzwesten beer is brewed, everything seems straightforward. But his journey is far from it. Pursued and attacked from all sides, guarded and guided by creatures of myth, Duffy is no sooner in Vienna than the city is besieged by the turkish armies of Suleiman. And it becomes apparent that Duffy’s presence is no accident and that it is up to him to preserve the West until the drawing of the dark …

Si Morley is bored with his job as a commercial illustrator and his social life doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. So, when he is approached by an affable ex-football star and told that he is just what the government is looking for to take part in a top-secret programme, he doesn’t hesitate for too long. And so one day Si steps out of his twentieth-century, New York apartment and finds himself back in January 1882. There are no cars, no planes, no computers, no television and the word ‘nuclear’ appears in no dictionaries. For Si, it’s very like Eden, somewhere he could find happiness. But has he really been back in time? The portfolio of tintype photographs and sketches that he brings back convince the government. But all Si wants is to return …

Brendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic.

When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to 1684.

Coleridge himself and poet Lord Byron make appearances in the novel, which also features a poor tinkerer who creates genetic monsters and a werewolf that inhabits others’ bodies when his latest becomes too hairy.

The Prince of Ombria is dying, and already his sinister great-aunt is plotting to seize power. The Black Pearl is feared throughout the land, and the city folk know her reign will be a terrible one. Only the prince’s son can stop her from seizing the throne but he’s just a boy – barely worth the trouble of doing away with.

Ombria, it seems, is doomed. And yet, beneath the streets, in a buried world of shadows and ghosts, a mysterious sorceress is weaving new spells, watched over by a girl sculpted entirely from wax …

At the heart of the wildwood lies a place of mystery and legend, from which few return and none emerged unchanged: Lavondyss . . . the ultimate realm, the source of all myth.

When Harry Keeton disappeared into Ryhope Wood, his sister Tallis was just an infant. Now, thirteen years old, she hears him whispering to her from the Otherworld. He is in danger. He needs her help. Using masks, magic and clues left by her grandfather, she finds a way to enter the primitive forest and begin her search. Eventually she comes to Lavondyss itself, a realm both beautiful and deadly, a place in which she is changed forever . . .

Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood won the World Fantasy Award and is among the most praised post-war novels of the fantastical. In this haunting sequel, Lavondyss, we are returned to the Wildwood and the mythos that Holdstock has made his own.


Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1989.

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.

It’s All Hallow’s Eve, and Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to town.

Hear the music, see the lights, shrug off life’s worries and enter a place where dreams are not dreams, and wishes can be real.

All this awaits two boys trembling on the brink of manhood. But entering the smoke, mazes and mirrors, they will discover that not all dreams are worth the cost that must be paid . . .

Ray Bradbury’s seminal tale of life in small-town America is as prescient today as it was sixty years ago.

Elizabeth Waters, an archeologist who abandoned her husband and daughter years ago to pursue her career, can see the shadows of the past. It’s a gift she keeps secret from her colleagues and students, one that often leads her to incredible archeological discoveries – and the terrible suspicion that she might be going mad.

Then on a dig in the Yucatan, the shadow of a Mayan priestess speaks to her. Suddenly Elizabeth’s daughter Diane arrives, hoping to reconnect with her mother. As Elizabeth, her daughter and the priestess fall into the mysterious world of Mayan magic, it is clear one of them will be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice …

Sybel, the beautiful great-granddaughter of the wizard Heald, has grown up on Eld Mountain with only the fantastic beasts summoned there by wizardry as companions. She cares nothing for humans until, when she is 16, a baby is brought for her to raise, a baby who awakens emotions that she has never known before.

But the baby is Tamlorn, the only son of King Drede, and, inevitably, Sybel becomes entangled in the human world of love, war and revenge – and only her beasts can save her from the ultimate destruction…

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.

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.