S.F. Masterworks

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...

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...

A landmark book in the fields of science fiction and feminism.Four women living in parallel worlds, each with a different gender landscape. When they begin to travel to each other's worlds each woman's preconceptions on gender and what it means to be a...

A novel of dystopian future in the tradition of SOYLENT GREEN and H.G. Wells' THE TIME MACHINE, with an introduction by Ken MacLeodTinker was a good citizen of the Hive - a model worker. But when he was allowed sexual activation he found Mu Ren who, like...

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...

Stephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence finally enters the SF Masterwork series!A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is...

The Sumner family can read the signs: the droughts and floods, the blighted crops, the shortages, the rampant diseases and plagues, and, above all, the increasing sterility all point to one thing. Their isolated farm in the Appalachian Mountains gives...

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 ...

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...

A whisperjewel from Gwen Delvano calls Dirk t'Larien across space and beyond the Tempter's Veil to Worlorn, a dying Festival planet of rock and ice. Warlorn is slowly drifting through twilight to neverending night; as the planet sinks into darkness, so...

Ned Henry is a time-travelling historian who specialises in the mid-20th century - currently engaged in researching the bombed-out Coventry Cathedral. He's also made so many drops into the past that he's suffering from a dangerously advanced case of...

Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes - until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius. But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental transformation preceded...

Far from Earth two sister planets, Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix, circle each other. It is said that a race of shapeshifting aliens once lived here, only to become extinct when human colonists arrived. But one man believes they still exist, somewhere out...

Rod McBan 151st farms 'stroon', the immortality drug, and is the last scion of one of the oldest and most honourable families on Norstrilia, only source of stroon. But he's also a telepathic cripple and faces the ever-present risk of being culled under...

A young man arrives in the anarchic city of Bellona, in a near future USA. This world has two moons but could otherwise be our own.The man, known only as 'the Kid', begins to write a novel called Dhalgren that begins where it ends.Dhalgren is about the...

The year is 2110. Humankind is entering a new golden age.But when an amateur astronomer points his telescope at just the right corner of the night sky, he sees disaster hurtling toward Earth: a chunk of rock that could annihilate civilization. While a...

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...

Written against the background of the rise of Nazism, War With the Newts concerns the discovery in the South Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, which is enslaved and exploited by mankind. In time they rebel, laying siege to the strongholds of their former...

THE SEPARATION is the story of twin brothers, rowers in the 1936 Olympics (where they met Hess, Hitler's deputy); one joins the RAF, and captains a Wellington; he is shot down after a bombing raid on Hamburg and becomes Churchill's aide-de-camp; his twin...

Time is running out for the passengers and crew of the tourist cruiser Selene, incarcerated in a sea of choking lunar dust. On the surface, her rescuers find their resources stretched to the limit by the mercilessly unpredictable conditions of a totally...

A masterly tale of political deception from the most significant writer of SF in the 20th centuryWorld War III is raging - or so the millions of people crammed in their underground tanks believe. For fiteen years, subterranean humanity has been fed on...

Originally published in 1955 Jack Finney's sinister SF tale has outgrown the initial debate about whether it satirized Communism or the conformity of US society at the time, to become a classic of paranoia; an examination of our fear of 'the other'.Most...

'The historians can't seem to settle whether to call this one 'The Third Space War' (or the fourth), or whether 'The First Interstellar War' fits it better. We just call it 'The Bug War'. Everything up to then and still later were 'incidents',...

Colonists from the entire solar system converge on the mother planet for the 2276 celebrations.Among the influx of humanity is Duncan Makenzie, scientist-administrator from the underground colony of Titan, one of the outer moons of Saturn. Makenzie is...

Luna is an open penal colony and the regime is a harsh one. Not surprisingly, revolution against the hated authority is planned. But the key figures in the revolt are an unlikely crew: Manuel Garcia O'Kelly, an engaging jack of all trades, the beautiful...

A prescient tale of political satire set in a near future America by a master of the genreA few years from now the President of the USA will be an android and his entire government a fraud. Everyone in the country is maladjusted. Doesn't seem possible,...

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...

The war had been going on for nearly a year and the Sirian Empire had a huge advantage in personnel and equipment. Earth needed an edge. Which was where James Mowry came in. If a small insect buzzing around in a car could so distract the driver as to...

A powerful novel about what happens when the magic leaves our lives.Imagine what it would be like if you could tell what the innermost thoughts and feelings of those around you were. Imagine if, as you reached middle age, you lost that ability. What...

Another classic novel from the world's greatest writer of science fictionJason Taverner is a Six, the result of top secret government experiments forty years before which produced a handful of unnaturally bright and beautiful people ... and he's the...

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

Sirius is Thomas Trelone's great experiment - a huge, handsome dog with the brain and intelligence of a human being. Raised and educated in Trelone's own family alongside Plaxy, his youngest daughter, Sirius is a truly remarkable and gifted creature. His...

One of America's greatest writers gives us his unique perspective on our fears of nuclear annihilationExperiment.Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing...

Joanna. Jeannine. Janet. Jael.Four women, four worlds, four vastly different societies.When these women are suddenly able to communicate with each other through the boundaries of dimensions, they are confronted with what could have been if one thing...

The James Tiptree Jr Award-winning novel.Change or die. These are the only options available on the planet Jeep. Centuries earlier, a deadly virus shattered the original colony, killing the men and forever altering the few surviving women. Now,...

In addition to being the man who coined the term 'the Big Bang', world-renowned astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle also produced a fine body of science fiction. The Andromeda Anthology contains the acclaimed duology A for Andromeda and The Andromeda Breakthrough,...

Glen Runciter is dead.Or is he?Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and...

Walter Tevis is the acclaimed author of The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Queen's Gambit.'A moral tale that has elements of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Superman and Star Wars' LA TIMES'A moving examination of people discovering the...

Fourteen people arrive on the strange planet of Delmak-O; they have nothing in common other than a desire to make a fresh start. And they have no idea why they are there and no way of escaping. And then the first murder takes place ...'Has been described...

'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 StatesTwo...