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An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory.

The torturer’s apprentice, Severian, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners, is now the Lictor of Thrax, a city far distant from his home. But it is not long before Severian must flee this city, too, and journey again into the world. Embattled by friends and enemies alike, pursued by monstrous creatures, the one-time torturer’s apprentice must overcome hitherto unimagined perils, as he moves closer to fulfilling his ultimate destiny.

This edition contains the concluding two volumes of this four-volume novel, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch.

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.

This is science fiction on the grandest of scales – a cast of thousands set across hundreds of years and in the farthest reaches of Human Space. A prequel to his earlier novel A Fire Upon the Deep, this new novel is epic in scope and a thoroughly riveting read.
A Deepness In the Sky is the story of Pham Nuwen, a small cog in the interstellar trading fleet of the Queng Ho. Both they and the Emergents are orbiting Arachna, a dormant planet which will shortly wake up when its On/Off star relights after decades of darkness. Both groups hope to exploit the coming age of technology and commerce on Arachna. But while the Queng Ho seek only to trade aggressively, the Emergents plans are far more sinister, amounting to little short of genocide . . .

Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind’s potential is determined by its location in space – from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these ‘zones of thought’, but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artefact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.
Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines – an alien race with a harsh medieval culture – and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue party, not entirely composed of humans, must free the children – and retrieve a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.

Walter M. Miller Jr is best remembered as the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz, universally recognized as one of the greatest novels of modern SF. But as well as writing that deeply felt and eloquent book, he produced many shorter works of fiction of stunning originality and power.

His profound interest in religion and his innate literary gifts combined perfectly in the production of such works as The Darfstellar, for which he won a Hugo in 1955, Conditionally Human, I, Dreamer and The Big Hunger, all of which are included in this brilliant and essential collection.

In the jungles of Guatemala, David Mingolla is struggling to survive amongst the rotting vegetation and his despairing fellow foot soldiers. He knows he is nothing but an expendable pawn in an endless war. On R & R a few miles away from the warzone he meets Debora – an enigmatic young woman who may be working for the enemy – and stumbles into a deadly psychic conflict where the mind is the greatest weapon.

One man must make a journey across a once colonised alien planet. Abandoned by man when it was discovered that the species there were actually sentient, the planet is now a place of mystery. A mystery that obsesses the lone traveller Gundersen and takes him on a long trek to attempt to share the religious rebirthing of the aliens. A journey that offers redemption from guilt and sin.

This is one of Robert Silverberg’s most intense novels and draws heavily on Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS. It puts the reader at the heart of the experience and forces them to ask what they would do in the circumstances.

First published in 1970.

The balance of galactic power in the 31st century revolves around Illyrion, the most precious energy source in the universe. Captain Lorq van Ray’s varied and exotic crew know their mission is dangerous, but they have no idea of Lorq’s secret obsession: to gather Illyrion at source by flying through the very heart of an imploding star.

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 minstrel lives by his words, his tunes, and sometimes by his lies. But when the bold and gifted young Thomas the Rhymer awakens the desire of the powerful Queen of Elfland, he finds that words are not enough to keep him from his fate.

As the Queen sweeps him far from the people he has known and loved into her realm of magic, opulence – and captivity – he learns at last what it is to be truly human. When he returns to his home with the Queen’s parting gift, his great task will be to seek out the girl he loved and wronged, and offer her at last the tongue that cannot lie.

Award-winning author Ellen Kushner’s inspired retelling of an ancient legend weaves myth and magic into a vivid contemporary novel about the mysteries of the human heart. Brimming with ballads, riddles, and magical transformations, here is the timeless tale of a charismatic bard whose talents earn him a two-edged otherworldly gift.

Against the backdrop of the Gaean Reach, the widely populated region of space where the full diversity of human development is revealed, the story of Jaro Fath unfolds: from wildling orphan to spaceship captain, a tale of adventure and discovery wittily told.

Jaro’s life is directed by an inner voice he cannot account for . . . until he returns to Kammerwelt, described in The Handbook of the Planets as the fourth world in the entourage of Robert Palmer’s Star, drifting in a far-flung sector of the galaxy known as the Dragon’s Maw.

Jaro is haunted by memories of his dead mother’s terror, and he is about to find out why . . .

Anton is an undercover operative from future Earth, who travels to an alien world whose culture has not progressed beyond the Middle Ages. Although in possession of far more advanced knowledge than the society around him, he is forbidden to interfere with the natural progress of history. His place is to observe rather than interfere – but can he remain aloof in the face of so much cruelty and injustice …?

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.

Mesklin is a vast, inhospitable, disc-shaped planet, so cold that its oceans are liquid methane and its snows are frozen ammonia. It is a world spinning dizzyingly, a world where gravity can be a crushing 700 times greater than Earth’s, a world too hostile for human explorers.

But the planet holds secrets of inestimable value, and an unmanned probe that has crashed close to one of its poles must be recovered. Only the Mesklinites, the small creatures so bizarrely adapted to their harsh environment, can help.

And so Barlennan, the resourceful and courageous captain of the Mesklinite ship Bree, sets out on an heroic and appalling journey into the terrible unknown. For him and his people, the prize to be gained is as great as that for mankind…

Hal Clement’s MISSION OF GRAVITY is universally regarded as one of the most important and best loved novels in the genre. The remarkable and sympathetic depiction of an alien species and the plausible and scientifically based realisation of the strange world they inhabit make it a major landmark in the history of hard SF.

There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st-century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes … all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.

Moving, sensory, impressionistic, as jagged as the times it portrays, this book is a real mind stretcher – and yet beautifully orchestrated to give a vivid picture of the whole.

A long, long time from now, in the valleys of what will no longer be called Northern California, might be going to have lived a people called the Kesh.

But Always Coming Home is not the story of the Kesh. Rather it is the stories of the Kesh – stories, poems, songs, recipes – Always Coming Home is no less than an anthropological account of a community that does not yet exist, a tour de force of imaginative fiction by one of modern literature’s great voices.

Grand Master Ursula K. LeGuin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field – and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters was her first collection and it brings together some of finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’, the Nebula Award-winning ‘The Day Before the Revolution’, and the Hugo-nominated ‘Winter’s King’, which gave readers their first glimpse of the world later made famous in her Hugo- and Nebula-winning masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness.

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 …

Edgewood is many houses, all put inside each other, or across each other. It’s filled with and surrounded by mystery and enchantment: the further in you go, the bigger it gets.

Smoky Barnable, who has fallen in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, comes to Edgewood, her family home, where he finds himself drawn into a world of magical strangeness.

Crowley’s work has a special alchemy – mixing the world we know with an imagined world which seems more true and real. Winner of the WORLD FANTASY AWARD, LITTLE, BIG is eloquent, sensual, funny and unforgettable, a true Fantasy Masterwork.

Winner of the WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL, 1982.

Deep within the wildwood lies a place of myth and mystery, from which few return, and of those few, none remain unchanged.

Ryhope Wood may look like a three-mile-square fenced-in wood in rural Herefordshire on the outside, but inside, it is a primeval, intricate labyrinth of trees, impossibly huge, unforgettable … and stronger than time itself.

Stephen Huxley has already lost his father to the mysteries of Ryhope Wood. On his return from the Second World War, he finds his brother, Christopher, is also in thrall to the mysterious wood, wherein lies a realm where mythic archetypes grow flesh and blood, where love and beauty haunt your dreams, and in promises of freedom lies the sanctuary of insanity …

Readers love Mythago Wood:

‘6.0 stars. This book is a MASTERPIECE and will likely be on my list of “All Time Favourite” novels before too long’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Blimey, what a book! Genuine classic of mythological fiction.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘An imaginative masterpiece has broken the boundaries of fantasy genre. In Mythagowood Myths manifest from characters’s unfathomable desires. The mysterious forest which the protagonists are obsessed with is an original concept of legends, it rooted in subconscious mind arouses overwhelming power of human minds’. Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘To attempt to write a straightforward synopsis of Mythago Wood itself is almost to lose the very essence of the novel, to break away from the ethereal feeling which transcends the book.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘I’ve seldomly read a book that is so rich and enthralling in its descriptions and really draws me into the mythical woods, where time flows differently, where your subconscious can conjure up archetypes and these can infringe upon your very real life outside of the forest.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The sword Tyrfing has been broken to prevent it striking at the roots of Yggdrasil, the great tree that binds earth, heaven and hell together … But now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves, who are heavily involved in their war against the trolls, and only Skafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade the mighty ice-giant, Bolverk, to make the sword Thor broke whole again. But things are never easy, and along the way Skafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard the changeling, who took his place in the world of men.

A superb dark fantasy of the highest, and most Norse, order. THE BROKEN SWORD is a fantasy masterpiece.

Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez S.J., is a part of a four man scientific commission to the planet Lithia, there to study a harmonious society of aliens living on a planets which is a biologist’s paradise. He soon finds himself troubled: how can these perfect beings, living in an apparent Eden, have no conception of sin or God? If such a sinless Eden has been created apart from God, then who is responsible?

Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1959.

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business.

And where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

A cynical and compelling tale of politics, exploitation and colonisation on another planet

The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries.

Subtitled, with savage irony, ‘The Making of a Utopia’, JEM is one of Frederik Pohl’s most powerful novels.