SF Masterworks

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...

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...

A world of peaceful aliens conquered by 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 to retaliate against their...

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...

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...

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...

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...

ENTER THE ADMINISTRATIONPeretz spends his days navigating the bureaucracy of the Administration, the institute tasked with governing the Forest below. Except no one ever seems to go there, and his attempts only trap him further within the workings of...

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...

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...

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...

It began with a blinding light, a divine revelation from a mysterious intelligence that called itself VALIS. And with that, the fabric of reality was ripped open and laid bare so that anything seemed possible, but nothing seemed quite right.Part science...

The critically acclaimed and bestselling sequel to HYPERION, from the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Terror, which is now a chilling TV show.The mysterious Time Tombs are opening and the Shrike that has risen from them may well...

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...

A classic science fiction tale of artifical worlds by one of the great American writers of the 20th centuryGlen Runciter is dead.Or is he?Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his...

A classic science fiction tale of artifical worlds by one of the great American writers of the 20th centuryGlen Runciter is dead.Or is he?Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

Anton is an undercover operative from future Earth, who travels to an alien world whose culture has not progressed beyond the Middle Ages. Although in possession of far more advanced knowledge than the society around him, he is forbidden to interfere...

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...

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...

Imagine a distant world where gods walk as men, but wield vast and hidden powers. Here they have made the stage on which they build a subtle pattern of alliance, love, and deadly enmity. Are they truly immortal? Who are these gods who rule the destiny of...

Genly Ai is an ethnologist observing the people of the planet Gethen, a world perpetually in winter. The people there are androgynous, normally neuter, but they can become male ot female at the peak of their sexual cycle. They seem to Genly Ai alien,...

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...

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

While searching for his missing father, Anthony Julian embarks on a terrifying journey into the Earth's interior. There he discovers a subterranean world, where descendants of the Roman Army suffer under a totalitarian regime in which individualism is...

Welcome to the strangest, most distinctive future ever imagined by a science fiction writer. An interstellar empire ruled by the mysterious Lords of the Instrumentality, whose access to the drug stroon from the planet Norstrilia confers on them virtual...

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...

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...

Edward Prendick is shipwrecked and finds himself stranded on an island in the Pacific. Here he meets the sinister Dr Moreau, a vivisectionst driven out of Britain in disgrace. And soon strange events cause Prendick to uncover the full horror of Dr...