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.
Contains a series of connected stories, a series of legends, myths, and campfire stories told by Dogs about the end of human civilization, centering on the Webster family, who, among their other accomplishments, designed the ships that took Men to the stars and gave Dogs the gift of speech and robots to be their hands.
Dr. Michael Novak quits his job at the Atomic Energy Commission, where he worked with the group of scientists on a secret project, to apply for the job with the American Society for Space Flight. Working on a new project Novak becomes suspicious when the chief engineer is murdered. Now he is forced to finish the project he is suspicious about as well as to try to figure out who killed the chief engineer.
John Collier's edgy, sardonic tales are works of rare wit, curious insight, and scary implication. They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl. With a cast of characters that ranges from man-eating flora to disgruntled devils and suburban salarymen (not that it's always easy to tell one from another), Collier's dazzling stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy, revealing a surreal landscape whose unstable surface is depth-charged with surprise.
The classic postapocalyptic thriller with “all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare” (The Times, London). Triffids are odd, interesting little plants that grow in everyone’s garden. Triffids are no more than mere curiosities—until an event occurs that alters human life forever. What seems to be a spectacular meteor shower turns into a bizarre, green inferno that blinds everyone and renders humankind helpless. What follows is even stranger: spores from the inferno cause the triffids to suddenly take on a life of their own. They become large, crawling vegetation, with the ability to uproot and roam about the country, attacking humans and inflicting pain and agony. William Masen somehow managed to escape being blinded in the inferno, and now after leaving the hospital, he is one of the few survivors who can see. And he may be the only one who can save his species from chaos and eventual extinction . . . With more than a million copies sold, The Day of the Triffids is a landmark of speculative fiction, and “an outstanding and entertaining novel” (Library Journal). “A thoroughly English apocalypse, it rivals H. G. Wells in conveying how the everyday invaded by the alien would feel. No wonder Stephen King admires Wyndham so much.” —Ramsey Campbell “One of my all-time favorite novels. It’s absolutely convincing, full of little telling details, and that sweet, warm sensation of horror and mystery.” —Joe R. Lansdale
Ray Bradbury's remarkable collection of stories - all told on the skin of a man. Now part of the Voyager Classics collection. If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed, with his sulphurous colour and exquisite human anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man's body for his art... Yet the Illustrated Man has tried to burn the illustrations off. He's tried sandpaper, acid, a knife. Because, as the sun sets, the pictures glow like charcoals, like scattered gems. They quiver and come to life. Tiny pink hands gesture, tiny mouths flicker as the figures enact their stories - voices rise, small and muted, predicting the future. Here are sixteen tales: sixteen illustrations... the seventeenth is your own future told on the skin of the Illustrated Man.
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.
No one who has read the famous "Skylark" stories or the other epic space adventures written by Edward E. Smith is ever likely to forget the name of the father of the modern interplanetary story. Twenty-five years ago Dr. Smith set the pattern for other writers to follow--and they're still following! "First Lensman", Smith's latest story, reestablishes his position as leader in his chosen field. His science novels continue to thrill his thousands of readers with their tremendous imaginative scope, their sure grasp of vast interstellar distances, their skillful creation of alien intelligences, their breath-taking adventures.In "First Lensman" you are transported to the day in the not-too-distant future when fleets of commercial space ships travel constantly between the planets of numerous solar systems. With interstellar commerce come interstellar headaches. The forces of law and order lag far behind those of organized crime. Civilization seems to be heading for chaos. A small group of men, headed by Virgil Samms, Chief of the Triplanetary Service, and Councillor "Rocky" Rod Kinnison, face the issue--and bring into the open a secret conflict that has been going on for uncounted ages.Strange and exciting events follow. Strange worlds and stranger peoples enter the picture. In this gripping narrative you will visit Arisia with Virgil Samms when he becomes First Lensman; you will engage in adventures on other delightfully wackly worlds, such as Rigel Four, where people look like animated oil drums, or Palain Seven whose frigid-blooded race has an extension into the fourth dimension. You will see the forming of the Galactic Patrol.Above all, you will be entranced by a story that will lift you out of the present into a world to come; a novel which is part of an epic without parallel in science fiction--the Lensman Series.
The classic novel of non-Aristotelian logic and the coming race of supermen Grandmaster A. E. van Vogt was one of the giants of the 1940s, the Golden Age of classic SF. Of his masterpieces, The World of Null-A is his most famous and most influential. It was the first major trade SF hardcover ever, in 1949, and has been in print in various editions ever since. The entire careers of Philip K. Dick, Keith Laumer, Alfred Bester, Charles Harness, and Philip Jose Farmer were created or influenced by The World of Null-A, and so it is required reading for anyone who wishes to know the canon of SF classics. It is the year 2650 and Earth has become a world of non-Aristotelianism, or Null-A. This is the story of Gilbert Gosseyn, who lives in that future world where the Games Machine, made up of twenty-five thousand electronic brains, sets the course of people's lives. Gosseyn isn't even sure of his own identity, but realizes he has some remarkable abilities and sets out to use them to discover who has made him a pawn in an interstellar plot. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
One million years back in the swirling, shrouded past, evil ultra-beings ruled the Planet Roo. Suddenly, unbelievably, they are alive again, threatening the universe with total destruction. Only one man dares challenge the Evil Ones. He is Captain Future, inter-galactic agent of justice, whose identity is top secret, whose strength is ultimate. He sets out alone to stop the deathless menace creeping ever close...
Along with I, Claudius, The Golden Fleece is considered one of Robert Graves's most exciting and transporting historical novels. The Golden Fleece was at one time the most sacred religious object of the ancient Greeks, and had been sent away as the result of a power struggle between the Greeks and earlier inhabitants of the Greek peninsula. In this the original quest narrative, Jason leads a voyage of heroes, including his friend Hercules and many others, in his ship the Argo, to recapture the sacred Golden Fleece and bring it home. To do so he must travel across the whole of the ancient world, perform impossible tasks, and undergo betrayals and tragedies beyond comprehension or human endurance. Poet, translator, memoirist, novelist, classicist Robert Graves stands alone for his ability to bring to modern readers the great stories of the ancient world with all their vividness and gore and power intact. As he has shown in many of his 140 published works, his facility with ancient myths and his understanding of how they still inform our imaginative lives helps make The Golden Fleece feel as fresh and necessary today as it did the first time someone told the story of Jason and the Argonauts some three thousand years ago. Seven Stories' Robert Graves Project spans 14 titles, and includes fiction and nonfiction, adult, young adult and children's books, in a striking new uniform design, with new introductions and afterwords. Among the works still to come are Count Belisarius, Hebrew Myths, and Lawrence and the Arabs. The online partner for the Robert Graves Project is RosettaBooks.
A professor discourages his wife’s witchcraft to disastrous ends in this Hugo Award–winning novel—that inspired three films—by the Grand Master of Fantasy. Ethnology professor Norman Saylor is shocked to discover that his wife, Tansy, has been putting his research on “Conjure Magic” into practice. She only wants to protect him from the other spell-casting faculty wives who would stop at nothing to advance their husbands’ careers. But Norman, as a man of science, demands she put an end to it. And when Tansy’s last charm is burned . . . Norman’s life starts falling apart. First, Norman has a disastrous run-in with a former protégé. Then his student secretary accuses him of seducing her. He’s even passed over for a promotion that had been certain. Plus he’s become exceedingly accident prone: from shaving to carpet tacks to letter openers, hazards are suddenly everywhere. At his wit’s end, he begins to worry that a dark presence is exploiting his fear of trucks. But the worst is yet to come—when Tansy takes his curse upon herself. Now, in order to save his wife, Norman must overcome his disbelief and embrace the dark magic he disdains. Winner of the 1944 Retrospective Hugo Award, Conjure Wife is widely celebrated as a modern classic of horror-fantasy and has been adapted for film three times: Burn, Witch Burn (1962), Weird Woman (1944), and Witch’s Brew (1980).
Classic Heinlein. Short-sighted utopians in a futurist society recruit a disaffected "superior" man, and get far more than they bargain for. With an all new afterword by Tony Daniel. Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty and war have been things found only in the histories. And applied genetics has given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century. They should all have been very happy.... But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line; each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the pointless comedy. However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries who find utopia not just boring, but desperately in need of leaders who know just What Needs to be Done, are planning to revolt and put themselves in charge. Knowing of Hamilton's disenchantment with the modern world, they have recruited him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman is definitely not a good idea....
Austin Tappan Wright left the world a wholly unsuspected legacy. After he died in a tragic accident, among this distinguished legal scholar's papers were found thousands of pages devoted to a staggering feat of literary creation-a detailed history of an imagined country complete with geography, genealogy, literature, language and culture. As detailed as J.R.R. Tolkien's middle-earth novels, Islandia has similarly become a classic touchstone for those concerned with the creation of imaginary world.
The SF classic novel of the terror that lurked in DONOVAN’S BRAIN. DEAD...Doomed by disease, then mangled in a plane crash, there was no doubt that Donovan was dead. YET...floating in a tank of nutrient, linked to complex apparatus, Donovan’s brain still lived... ALIVE...someone walked with Donovan’s gait, wrote his signature, knew his foulest secrets—and carried out his last, weirdest plan! “Donovan’s Brain is terrific!”—THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gray Lensman (4th adventure of the series) Somewhere among the galaxies was the stronghold of Boskone, a network of brilliant interplanetary criminals, whose mania for conquest threatened the future of all known civilization... But where? The Boskonian bases dotted the universe, shielded by gigantic thought-screens that defied penetration. The best minds in the Galactic Patrol had tried. Now it was up to Lensman Kim Kinnison, using his fantastic mental powers to infiltrate the Boskonian strongholds and learn the location of the enemy's Grand Base.
This is a novel of the future, profoundly sinister in its vision of a drab terror. Ironic and detached, the author shows us the totalitarian World-state through the eyes of a product of that state, scientist Leo Kall. Kall has invented a drug, kallocain, which denies the privacy of thought and is the final step towards the transmutation of the individual human being into a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism." For, says Leo, "from thoughts and feelings, words and actions are born. How then could these thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn't the whole fellow-soldier belong to the state? To whom should his thoughts and feelings belong then, if not to the state?" As the first-person record of Leo Kall, scientist, fellow-soldier too late disillusioned to undo his previous actions, Kallocain achieves a chilling power and veracity that place it among the finest novels to emerge from the strife-torn Europe of the twentieth century.
Growing up in a colorful world peopled by knights in armor and fair damsels, foul monsters and evil witches, young Arthur slowly learns the code of the gentleman. Under the wise guidance of Merlin, the all-powerful magician for whom life progresses backward, the king-to-be becomes expert in falconry, jousting, hunting, and swordplay. He is transformed by his remarkable old tutor into various animals so that he may experience life from all points of view. In every conceivable way, he is readied for the day when he, alone among Englishmen, is destined to draw the marvelous sword from the magic stone and become the King of England.
The first book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which continues with Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet begins the adventures of the remarkable Dr. Ransom. Here, that estimable man is abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken via spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human sacrifice, and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. Once on the planet, however, Ransom eludes his captors, risking his life and his chances of returning to Earth, becoming a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity. First published in 1943, Out of the Silent Planet remains a mysterious and suspenseful tour de force.
Carson Napier, first Earthman to reach Venus, had to keep alert every instant of his stay on that world of mist and mystery. For its lands were unmapped, its inhabitants many, varied, and strange, and he had taken an obligation to restore a native princess to her lost homeland. On terrible oceans where dreaded sea-monsters dwelled, in deep forests where terror haunted every branch, and behind the walls of eerie cities where power-mad chieftains plotted uncanny schemes, "Carson of Venus" is fast-paced science fiction adventure.
Kimball Kinnison is a Lensman and an officer of the Galactic Patrol, a kind of interstellar police force with almost unlimited powers. The Lens gives its wearer a variety of mental capabilities, including those needed to enforce the law on alien planets, and to bridge the communication gap between different life-forms. It can provide mind-reading and telepathic abilities. Kinnison is sent on a mission to fight the pirates of Boskone, an evil empire of enormous power and unimagined technological capabilities.
