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.
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.
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
Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, depending not on the outcome of that particular conflict but on the failure or success of a future "Tibetan Renaissance" to influence the temper and ideology of the militaristic Russian and Chinese empires that threaten it. One of the futures involves worldwide Chinese imperialism and the subsequent degeneration and extinction of the human race, unable to defend itself against speedily evolving rats. The other ends in overthrowing the empires and creation of a worldwide socialist utopia.
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.
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...
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.
A spellbinding novel set in the universe of Isaac Asimov’s classic Galactic Empire series and Foundation series Due to circumstances within our control . . . tomorrow will be canceled. The Eternals, the ruling class of the Future, had the power of life and death not only over every human being but over the very centuries into which they were born. Past, Present, and Future could be created or destroyed at will. You had to be special to become an Eternal. Andrew Harlan was special. Until he committed the one unforgivable sin—falling in love. Eternals weren’t supposed to have feelings. But Andrew could not deny the sensations that were struggling within him. He knew he could not keep this secret forever. And so he began to plan his escape, a plan that changed his own past . . . and threatened Eternity itself.
'No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.' Thirtieth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Two generations after the nuclear holocaust, rumors persisted about a secret desert hideaway where scientists worked with dangerous machines and where men plotted to revive the cities. Almost a continent away, Len Coulter heard whisperings that fired his imagination. Then one day he found a strange wooden box ...
Four explorers from different backgrounds are marooned in space—and must unite to escape their floating prison—in this novel by a Nebula Award winner. In the twenty-third century, when humankind has spread itself throughout the cosmos, with many intergalactic colonies teetering on the brink of open revolt against the hated ruling Protectorate, a team of four is transported by a miraculous technology onto the deep-space vessel Southern Cross. Hailing from vastly different backgrounds, philosophies, and worlds, Ryerson, Nakamura, Sverdlov, and Maclaren have been entrusted to explore a long-dead star located light-years beyond where humanity has previously traveled. But venturing too close to the target proves disastrous when the black sun’s magnetic field permanently obliterates their only means of returning home. Suddenly, four strangers, two hailing from a privileged Earth and two from oppressed galactic colonies, must put aside their differences and work together to somehow find a way out of an impossible situation before time runs out, or die together at the farthest edge of a cold and merciless universe. A remarkably thoughtful and profoundly moving novel of survival in the darkest reaches of outer space, The Enemy Stars is a work of great power and insight by multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner Poul Anderson, one of the legendary greats of golden-age science fiction.
