S.F. Masterworks

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. Severian, a torturer's apprentice, is exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners...

David's father doesn't approve of Angus Morton's unusually large horses, calling them blasphemies against nature. And blasphemies, as everyone knows, should be burned: KEEP PURE THE STOCK OF THE LORD; WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT.Little does he realise ...

For a decade Alice Sheldon produced an extraordinary body of work under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr, until her identity was exposed in 1977. HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER presents the finest of these stories and contains the NEBULA AWARD-winning LOVE IS...

In the year 2093, human consciousness has expanded to the point that man can visit the past using a technique called 'mind-travelling'. Artist Edward Bush returns from a lengthy 'trip' to the Jurassic period to find the government overthrown by an...

The multi-award-winning SF masterpiece from one of the greatest SF writers of all timeRama is a vast alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System. A perfect cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly, racing through space, Rama is a...

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...

The multi-award-winning SF masterpiece from one of the greatest SF writers of all timeRama is a vast alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System. A perfect cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly, racing through space, Rama is a...

The book that reinvented Space Opera. The Canterbury Tales in space - from the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Terror, which is now a chilling TV show.It is the 29th century and the universe of the Human Hegemony is under threat...

The book that defined the cyberpunk movement, inspiring everything from The Matrix to Cyberpunk 2077.The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer...

In the far future, after human civilization has spread through the galaxy, communications begin to arrive in an apparently alien language. They appear to threaten invasion, but in order to counter the threat, the messages must first be understood...

'No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's...'So begins H. G. Wells' classic novel in which Martian lifeforms take over planet Earth. As...

The classic novel about a daring experiment in human intelligence'A masterpiece of poignant brilliance . . . heartbreaking, and utterly, completely brilliant' Guardian'A timeless tearjerker' IndependentCharlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper and the...

A literary masterpiece from one of the great writers of our time: 'Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart' David Mitchell'Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new' Two people, until...

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth ... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of...

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...

One of Clarke's most famous and acclaimed novels, winner of both the HUGO AWARD and the NEBULA AWARDIn the 22nd century visionary scientist Vannevar Morgan conceives the most grandiose engineering project of all time, and one which will revolutionize the...

When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by...

Wealth ... or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to...

One of the very best must-read novels of all time - with a new introduction by Roddy Doyle'A well told tale signifying a good deal; one to be read again and again' THE TIMES'The book I wish I had written ... It's so far away from my own imagination, I'd...

Amber is the one real world, casting infinite reflections of itself - Shadow worlds, that can be manipulated by those of royal Amberite blood. But the royal family is torn apart by jealousies and suspicion; the disappearance of the Patriarch Oberon has...

Gully Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class.EDUCATION: noneSKILLS: none MERITS: noneRECOMMENDATIONS: noneThat's the official verdict on Gully Foyle, unskilled space crewman.But right now he is the only survivor on his drifting, wrecked spaceship, and when...

A deep and meaningful masterpiece of science fiction, full of heart and mind-bending ideas. A true classic, Vonnegut will make you laugh and have you contemplating the meaning of lifeWhen Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a...

A brilliant sci-fi novel from one of the last century's most influential pop culture figuresSubstance D - otherwise known as Death - is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain's two...

The world ended. People survived.Per Hiero Desteen was a priest, a telepath-and a highly trained killer. Five thousand years after the apocalyptic event known only as The Death, Hiero is tasked with finding the secrets of the old world, which could...

George Orr is a mild and unremarkable man who finds the world a less than pleasant place to live: seven billion people jostle for living space and food. But George dreams dreams which do in fact change reality - and he has no means of controlling this...

Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life, except that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day - and winning, every day.But he gradually begins to suspect that his life - indeed his whole world - is an illusion,...

The legendary space opera that kicked off the ground-breaking, universe-spanning series.Nine hundred thousand years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin. For the human colonists now settling the Amarantin homeworld Resurgam, it's of little more than...

In the year 2100, the invention of the Electron Pump - an apparently inexhaustible supply of free energy - has enabled humanity to devote its time and energies to more than the struggle for survival, finally breaking free of the Earth. But the Electron...

Seven years after the day of the bombs, Point Reyes was luckier than most places. Its people were reasonably normal - except for the girl with her twin brother growing inside her, and talking to her. Their barter economy was working. Their resident...

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

On a far future Earth, mankind's achievements are immense: artificially intelligent robots, genetically uplifted animals, interplanetary travel, genetic modification of the human form itself.But nothing comes without a cost. Humanity is tired, its vigour...

The computer age has arrived a century ahead of time with Charles Babbage's perfection of his Analytical Engine. The Industrial Revolution, supercharged by the development of steam-driven cybernetic Engines, is in full and drastic swing. Great Britain,...

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...

The Caltraps of Time is David I. Masson's only published book of fiction, a collection of short stories, most of which made their first appearance in New Worlds SF during the 1960s under the legendary editorship of Michael Moorcock. An apocalyptic battle...

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...

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...

The book that reinvented Space Opera - from the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Terror, which is now a chilling TV show.It is the 29th century and the universe of the Human Hegemony is under threat. Invasion by the warlike Ousters...

It is a mysterious city whose sun is switched on in the morning and switched off at night, bordered by an abyss on one side and an impossibly high wall on the other. Its inhabitants are people who were plucked from twentieth-century history at...

The remarkable novel upon which the stunning cult film was based.'Beautiful ... The story of an extraterrestrial visitor from another planet is designed mainly to say something about life on this one' NEW YORK TIMESThomas Jerome Newton is an...

'An astonishing science fiction phenomenon' WASHINGTON POST'I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings' Arthur C Clarke'It is possible that Dune is even more relevant now than when it was first published' NEW YORKERThe Duke of Atreides...