SF Masterworks

'I am Zhang, alone with my light, and in that light I think for a moment that I am free.' Imagine a world where Chinese Marxism has vanquished the values of capitalism and Lenin is the prophet of choice. A cybernetic world where the new charioteers...

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...

In a world drowning in data and information and choking on novelty and innovation, Nickie Haflinger - a most dangerous fugitive who doesn't even appear to exist - provides a window onto a global society falling apart in all directions, with madness run...

James Blish's galaxy-spanning masterwork, originally published in four volumes, explores a future in which two crucial discoveries - antigravity devices which enable whole cities to be lifted from the Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs...

One of the very best must-read SF novels of all timeWealth ... 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...

1588: Queen Elizabeth is felled by an assassin's bullet. Within the week, the Spanish Armada had set sail, and its victory changed the course of history. 1968: England is still dominated by the Church of Rome. There are no telephones, no television, no...

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...

The award-winning account of a man changed beyond all recognition so that he can be part of a bold experiment to live on Mars Ill luck made Roger Torraway the subject of the Man Plus Programme, but it was deliberate biological engineering which turned...

Christopher Priest is the Arthur C. Clarke Award and World Fantasy Award-winning author of THE SEPARATION, THE GLAMOUR, THE DREAM ARCHIPELAGO and THE PRESTIGE, which was filmed by Christopher Nolan and starred Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. THE...

The balance of galactic power in the 31st century revolves around Illyrion, the most precious energy source in the universe. Captain Lorq van Ray's varied and exotic crew know their mission is dangerous, but they have no idea of Lorq's secret obsession:...

While on a boating holiday, Scott Carey is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray. A few weeks later, following a series of medical examinations, he can no longer deny the extraordinary truth. Not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was...

In the drowsy tranquility of Little Belaire, the Truthful Speakers lead lives of peaceful self-sufficiency ignoring the depopulated wilderness beyond their narrow borders. It is a society untouched by pain or violence and the self-destroying 'Angels' of...

John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. But he was also the last of the Centaurans - or at least, half of him was - which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which...

Francis Conway is Swill - one of the 90% in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. A young boy growing. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption,...

Father Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez S.J., is a part of a four man scientific commission to the planet Lithia, there to study a harmonious society of aliens living on a planets which is a biologist's paradise. He soon finds himself troubled: how can these perfect...

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...

Above our planet hangs a hollow Stone, vast as the imagination of Man. The inner dimensions are at odds with the outer: there are different chambers to be breached, some even containing deserted cities. The furthest chamber contains the greatest mystery...

What does it mean to be human when you're part of the machine?Synners are synthesizers - not machines, but people. They take images from the brains of performers, and turn them into a form which can be packaged, sold and consumed. This book is set in a...

If your planet has been destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, your best friend turns out to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse (and not Guilford, as you'd thought), and you find yourself in the company of a...

Enter a decaying far, far future society, a time when anything and everything is possible, where words like 'conscience' and 'morality' are meaningless, and where heartfelt love blossoms mysteriously between Mrs Amelia Underwood, an unwilling time...

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,...

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...

For many generations the Just have been at war with the Protectors. In their strange world, supported by a huge pillar poised in the vast and mysterious Deep, ritual bloodshed and sorcery have obsessed the inhabitants since the beginning of time.Half...

Meet Karl Glogauer, time traveller and unlikely Messiah. When he finds himself in Palestine in the year 29AD he is shocked to meet the man known as Jesus Christ - a drooling idiot, hiding in the shadows of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth. But if he is...

A few years in the future, medical science has advanced to the point where it is practically unheard of for people to die of any cause except old-age. The few exceptions provide the fodder for a new kind of television show for avid audiences who lap up...

One man must make a journey across a once colonised alien planet. Abandoned by man when it was discovered that the species there were actually sentient, the planet is now a place of mystery. A mystery that obsesses the lone traveller Gundersen and takes...

Acclaimed as one of the most original voices in modern literature, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty has been awarded and nominated for a multitude of accolades over the span of his career, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.This...

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 Strugatsky brothers' poignant and introspective novel of first contact that inspired the classic film StalkerRed Schuhart is a stalker, one of those strange misfits who are compelled by some unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone and, in...

This new collection of stories from the multi-award-winning author of DOOMSDAY BOOK and TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG contains:A Letter from the ClearysAt the RialtoDeath on the NileThe Soul Selects Her own SocietyFire WatchInside JobEven the QueenThe Winds...

Ecological disaster has left the English countryside a wasteland. Humanity faces extinction, unless Greybeard and his wife Martha are successful in their quest for the scarcest and most precious of resources: human children.A haunting vision of a...

'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...

2026: Something is growing in the Pacific Ocean."The Slick" appears to be a strange, fungus-like organism, but its DNA is unlike anything else on the planet. Rumours start to fly. Was life discovered deep beneath the Martian icecaps on a recent Chinese...

Set in the twenty-second century after the repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment, the novel reveals a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights, and banned from public life. In this world, Earth's wealth relies on interplanetary...

Giant, technologically superior aliens have conquered Earth, but humankind survives - even flourishes in a way. Men and women live, like mice, in burrows in the massive walls of the huge homes of the aliens, and scurry about under their feet, stealing...

A moving, compulsive science fiction novel from one of the best writers in the fieldWhen the human settlers arrived on Hobbs Land, the native intelligent species, the Owlbrit, were already almost extinct. Before the last one died, a few years later, the...

A post-apocalyptic dystopian fable by the acclaimed author of HALF PAST HUMAN, with an introduction by Ken MacLeodRorqual Maru was a cyborg - part organic whale, part mechanised ship - and part god. She was a harvester - a vast plankton rake, now without...

In an America where the miraculous is par for the course, where magic and myths are as real as shopping malls and television game shows, Jennifer Mazdan listens to the modern storytellers recite the tales of the Founders.But when strange things start to...

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...

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...