Search Results for: masterworks

In the year 2038, the earth has been ravaged by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Retroviruses run rampant through humanity. Economic disaster has destabilised the world, the US has undergone a socialist revolution, and the balance of power has changed.

Then the aliens arrive.

With no clear understanding of the visitors’ intent, factions form, including the anti-alien group White Queen, working to turn humans against these extra-terrestrial tourists. Caught in the middle is Johnny Guglio, an American exile whose only fault was living near the landing site, and Braemar Wilson, a cutthroat reporter who will do whatever she needs to get ahead of the story. And for better or for worse, it seems being caught in the middle is the best place for them to uncover the truth.

Winner of the 1991 James Tiptree Jr. Award, WHITE QUEEN is the first in Gwyneth Jones’ critically acclaimed Aleutian Trilogy.

London. Early 21st Century. A Conservative government is in power in the UK, bringing increased wealth disparity, an ever-more militant police state, and rising civil discontent as the wealthy govern for themselves rather than the people.

But BREAKTHRU – a pharmaceutical company turned religious cult – have the answer. They call it Kairos.

Kairos allows the user to not just see a different world, but shape the world to their very will. Perfect for a cult of like-minded individuals. Disastrous when it is exposed to the general public.

As disparate groups of people try to shape the world into their own image, reality itself is placed under threat. With society so divided, is there any way to pull the world back together?


Written in 1988, this remarkably prescient book received great critical acclaim.

Anna Senoz is a brilliant young scientist, working towards her PhD and a bright career when she makes a discovery that could change the world of genetics forever.

The ‘Transferred Y’ chromosome, however, isn’t as welcomed by her peers, or the wider society. Anna is forced to choose between her dedication to her discovery, the progress of her career, and her responsibilities to her family. Does scientific integrity mean speaking out against the naysayers? Are the potential ramifications of her discovery too wide-reaching for her to risk pursuing it?

Winner of the 2004 Philip K. Dick award, Life examines society’s fixation on biological sex, the struggles of women in STEM, and the pressures placed upon them by families, colleagues and friends alike. Perfect for fans of alternate histories and near-future feminist SFF, like The Handmaid’s Tale and Vox.

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Winston Smith is a good worker. He supports the Party. He is good at his job rewriting history to Government specification. Big Brother watches him, but there is nothing to see.

Winston’s struggle against the totalitarian world he inhabits is a closely guarded secret. It exists only in his mind until he begins a secret love affair with Julia, a fellow worker. Is this enough to push him to revolution? Or is it the beginning of his downfall?

A masterwork of dystopian fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is harrowingly prescient, and its impact has stretched around the globe.

With a new introduction by political editor and writer Ian Dunt, this brand new edition of a science fiction classic is a must-have for any collector.

John Carter, veteran of the American Civil War, finds himself transported from Arizona to Mars when hiding from attackers in a secret cave. The inhabitants greet him, referring to the planet as Barsoom, and Carter finds that he has superhuman strength and agility due to the different gravity of this new world.

After joining the nomadic tribe of green, six-limbed Martians called Tharks, he rises through the ranks and earns the respect and friendship of one of the chiefs. Until, that is, the Tharks capture Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium and a member of the red, humanoid Martians. Rescuing Dejah Thoris, Carter attempts to return her to her people, finding himself at the centre of a conflict that reaches across Martian society, all while falling in love. Can he save Barsoom? What of Earth? Does he want to return, or would he rather stay with Dejah Thoris?

A Princess of Mars was first serialised in 1912, and to celebrate its centenary we have collected it and its two sequels – The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars – in this beautiful Golden Age Masterwork.

From the far reaches of space to the hidden corners of Earth, from aliens to wizards and everything in between . . .

One of the most influential SFF writers of modern times, Roger Zelazny wrote across a wide range of subgenres and themes, experimenting with form and story with mastery. He won many awards throughout his lifetime, including six Hugo awards, three Nebula awards and two Locus awards. He has inspired many of today’s great SFF authors.

This new collection contains a selection of his short stories and novellas which span the depth and breadth of the human imagination.

‘Zelazny has always had one of the most inventive imaginations in the genre’ Kirkus Reviews
‘Paragon of the storytelling art’ Robert Silverberg
‘Zelazny’s authority never falters, and nor does the charisma of his voice’ Locus

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.