Series: S.F. Masterworks

Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes is a profoundly moving and thought-provoking novel that tells the story of Charlie Gordon, a kind-hearted and intellectually disabled man working as a floor sweeper in a bakery. Often the target of cruel jokes by his co-workers, Charlie dreams of being smart and accepted like others. His life takes a dramatic turn when he...

The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough that will revolutionise interstellar civilisation by making possible instantaneous communication. It is the life work of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the arid anarchist world of Anarres. However, Shevek's work is being stifled by jealous colleagues, so he travels to Anarres's sister-planet Urras, hoping to find more liberty and tolerance there. But...

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. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo,...

Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction Arthur 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 from Guilford, but an alien from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse—Arthur is flung into an...

'A rich and complex story of friendship and love' GUARDIAN '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 recently strangers, find themselves on a long, tortuous and dangerous journey across the ice. One is an outcast, forced to leave his beloved homeland; the other...

World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick got 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. Ordered to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est,...

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 love to sit at my desk one day...

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 protect his civilisation from massing enemies. The planet is not the same as it used to be. Mutations...

'A rich and complex story of friendship and love' GUARDIAN '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 recently strangers, find themselves on a long, tortuous and dangerous journey across the ice. One is an outcast, forced to leave his beloved homeland; the other...

The Strugatsky brothers' poignant and introspective novel of first contact that inspired the classic film Stalker. Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those strange misfits who are compelled by some unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone and, in spite of the extreme danger, collect the mysterious artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is...

In A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, the far future cosmos is divided into 'zones of thought', an enigmatic partitioning of space where the intelligence and capabilities of minds are directly contingent upon their spatial location. From the sublime super-intelligent entities residing in the Transcend, to the rudimentary intellects tethered in the Unthinking Depths, this universe offers a...

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge is an extraordinary work of science fiction that explores the grandeur and complexity of interstellar exploration and commerce. Set in the distant future, this gripping prequel to the critically acclaimed A Fire Upon the Deep captures readers with an epic tale spanning hundreds of years and the farthest reaches of Human Space....

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 the Lictor of Thrax, a city far distant from his home. But it is...

The multi-award-winning SF masterpiece from one of the greatest SF writers of all time Rendezvous With Rama 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 technological marvel, a mysterious and deeply enigmatic alien artefact. It is Mankind's first visitor from the stars and...

One Thursday lunchtime, Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this is already more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun. And the Galaxy is a very, very large and startling place indeed... The Hitchhiker's Guide...

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 civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the...

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 regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out. If it hasn't already. Ubik is...

A Victorian scientist develops a time machine and travels to the year 802,171 AD. There he finds the meek, child-like Eloi who live in fear of the underground-dwelling Morlocks. When his time machine goes missing, the Traveller faces a fight to enter the Morlocks' domain and return to his own time. The Time Machine remains one of the cornerstones of...

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 intensified the internal conflict by leaving the throne apparently up for grabs. In a hospital on the Shadow...

World War Terminus devastated the Earth. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard searches for the renegade replicants he is sent to 'retire', while he dreams of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of natural life. The opportunity of a lifetime: kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in...

Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, he is converted into pure energy and only materialises when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and...

Gully Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class. EDUCATION: None. SKILLS: None. MERITS: None. RECOMMENDATIONS: None. That's the official verdict on Gully Foyle, an unskilled space crewman. But right now he is the only survivor on his drifting, wrecked spaceship. When another space vessel, the Vorga, ignores his distress flares and sails by, Gully becomes obsessed with revenge. He endures 170 days...

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 Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations...

Grand Master Ursula K. Le Guin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field and is likewise celebrated beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind's Twelve Quarters was her first collection, and it brings together some of her finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning 'The Ones Who Walk...

What could be more commonplace than grass, or a world covered over all its surface with a wind-whipped ocean of grass? But the planet Grass conceals horrifying secrets within its endless pastures. As an incurable plague attacks all inhabited planets but this one, the prairie-like Grass begins to reveal these secrets — and nothing will ever be the same again......

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 captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. In defending their lives, they endanger the very foundations of their society. Every blow against the invaders is...

Time Out Of Joint tells the story of Ragle Gumm, an ordinary man leading an ordinary life. He makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day — and winning, every day. However, Ragle gradually begins to suspect that his life — indeed his whole world — is an illusion, constructed around him for the express purpose of keeping...

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 academic interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect Amarantin city and a colossal statue of a winged Amarantin. For brilliant but ruthless scientist Dan Sylveste, it's more than merely intellectual curiosity —...

COMING TO BBC ONE IN AUTUMN 2019! 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 Martians emerge, they construct giant killing machines - armed...

What The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy, Dune is to science fiction. Presenting one of the most influential works of all time, which has inspired countless other stories for more than half a century, this is an awe-inspiring world, and a story of truly epic scope. 'An astonishing science fiction phenomenon' - Washington Post 'I know nothing comparable...

When Winston Niles Rumfoord flies his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, he is converted into pure energy and only materializes when his waveforms intercept Earth or some other planet. As a result, he only gets home to Newport, Rhode Island, once every fifty-nine days and then only for an hour. But at least, as a consolation, he now knows everything...

In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the use of the drug Can-D, which enables the user to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z, which is far more potent than Can-D. This new...

For Kivrin Engle, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman travelling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be...

The mysterious Time Tombs are opening, and the Shrike that has risen from them may well control the fate of all mankind. The Ousters are laying siege to the Hegemony of Man, and the AIs we created have turned against us to build the Ultimate Intelligence: God. The God of Machines. His genesis could mean annihilation for man. Something is...

A whisperjewel from Gwen Delvano calls Dirk t'Larien across the expanse of space to Worlorn, a dying festival planet of rock and ice. Worlorn is slowly drifting through twilight into a neverending night, and as the planet sinks into darkness, its inhabitants face annihilation. Seven years earlier, on Avalon, Gwen was Dirk's lover, his Guenevere; now she wears the jade-and-silver...

The last man on earth is not alone... I Am Legend follows Robert Neville, 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 civilisation. By...

Ursula Le Guin was able to reimagine many concepts we take to be natural, shared, and unalterable - gender, utopia, creation, war, family, the city, the country - and reveal the all-too-human constructions at their centre ... Literature will miss her. There's no one like her - Zadie Smith Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power - Observer Through...

In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilisation has vanished during his absence. Eventually, he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children, a...

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 control the fate of all mankind. The Ousters are laying seige to the Hegemony of Man and the AIs...

Listed by the Guardian as one of the top 100 science fiction books of the 21st century. On the barren surface of an asteroid, located deep in the galaxy beneath the unbearable light of the Kefahuchi Tract, lie three objects: an abandoned spacecraft, a pair of bone dice covered with strange symbols, and a human skeleton. What they are and...

Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shut out the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that ruled the stars. But then, as legend had it, the Invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, a Unique, to break through...

One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction Sunday Times With a new introduction by Justina Robson Imagine a future where crimes can be detected before they are committed, and criminals are convicted and sentenced for crimes before committing them. This is the scenario of Philip K. Dick's classic story, which was also a major Hollywood blockbuster...

Brilliant, driven Victor Frankenstein has at last realised his greatest ambition. The scientist has succeeded in creating intelligent life. But when his creature first stirs, Frankenstein realises he has made a monster. Abandoned by its maker and shunned by everyone who sees it, the Doctor's creation sets out to destroy him and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein...

'Genre cannot contain Ursula Le Guin: she is a genre in herself' Zadie Smith'Groundbreaking' Guardian'No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions' Paris ReviewA lone human emissary journeys from Earth to the planet of Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. His goal is to secure Winter's inclusion in a growing...

In the drowsy tranquillity 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 the past are barely remembered. But when Rush That Speaks leaves his home on a pilgrimage of self-enlightenment, he finds a landscape haunted...

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 his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary. Winner of the...

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 up in a challenging world, life is already difficult and rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption, official blindness, and nature have conspired to turn Swill homes into...

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 academic interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect Amarantin city and a colossal statue of a winged Amarantin. For brilliant but ruthless scientist Dan Sylveste, it's more than merely intellectual curiosity –...

Welcome to the Best of the Masterworks: a selection of the finest in science fiction When Edward Prendick is shipwrecked on a tropical island, he is surprised to find he has company in the form of Dr Moreau. Driven out of Britain in disgrace, Dr Moreau has decided to explore his science in peace and isolation. It isn't long before...

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 world where new technology spawns new crime before it hits the streets. In Synners the line between technology and humanity is hopelessly slim; the human...

Private William Mandella is a reluctant hero in an interstellar war against an unknowable and unconquerable alien enemy. But his greatest test will be when he returns home. Relativity means that for every few months' tour of duty centuries have passed on Earth, isolating the combatants ever more from the world for whose future they are fighting. The Earth he...

Thomas Jerome Newton is an extraterrestrial from the planet Anthea, which has been devastated by a series of nuclear wars, and whose inhabitants are twice as intelligent as human beings. When he lands on Earth - in Kentucky, disguised as a human - it's with the intention of saving his own people from extinction. Newton patents some very advanced Anthean...

In the 22nd century, visionary scientist Vannevar Morgan conceives the most grandiose engineering project of all time, one which will revolutionise the future of humankind in space: a Space Elevator. This colossal structure, 36,000 kilometres high, is anchored to an equatorial island in the Indian Ocean. The Fountains of Paradise by Sir Arthur C. Clarke explores this ambitious vision and...

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 possibilities of fiction and about the special demands and pleasures of...

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 amok and personal freedom surrendered to computers and bureaucrats. Caught and about to be re-programmed, can he escape once again, defy...

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 'time-lag'. Unfortunately for Ned, an emergency dash to Victorian England is required and he's the only available historian. But Ned's time-lag is...

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 civilisation. While a few fanatics welcome the apocalyptic destruction as a sign from God, the greatest scientific minds of...

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 magnate, has devised the ultimate scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the order of his society....

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 'time-lag'. Unfortunately for Ned, an emergency dash to Victorian England is required, and he's the only available historian. But Ned's time-lag is...

Merlin is a Prince of Chaos and Amber, Corwin's son and heir. He has grown up knowing that his legacy is to one day follow in his father's footsteps and live up to his father's legend. When Corwin goes missing, that day comes far sooner than he could ever have expected. Merlin must find his own identity as the ruler...

It's just a little later than now and Lola Hart is writing her life in a diary. She's a nice middle-class girl on the verge of her teens who schools at the calm end of town. A normal, happy girl. But in a disintegrating New York, she is a dying breed. War is breaking out on Long Island, the army...

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 ever to confront the Stone's scientists. But tombstone or milestone, the Stone is not an alien structure: it comes...

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 alien environment. A brilliantly imagined story of human ingenuity and survival, A Fall of Moondust is a tour-de-force...

One moment a man sits on a suburban hill, gazing curiously at the stars. The next, he is whirling through the firmament, and perhaps the most remarkable of all science fiction journeys has begun. Even Stapledon's other great work, Last and First Men, pales in ambition next to Star Maker, which presents nothing less than an entire imagined history of...

The Gate to Women's Country tells of a society that exists three hundred years after our own has nearly destroyed itself. Now, male warriors are separated from women at an early age and live in garrisons, plotting futilely for the battles which must never be fought again. Inside the women's towns, education, arts, and science flourish. But for some like...

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 Pump works by exchanging materials with a parallel universe, and such unbalancing of the cosmos has...

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, with her calculating-cannons, steam dreadnoughts, machine-guns and information technology, prepares to better the world's lot... The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William...

Private William Mandella is a reluctant hero in an interstellar war against an unknowable and unconquerable alien enemy. But his greatest test will be when he returns home. Relativity means that for every few months' tour of duty, centuries have passed on Earth, isolating the combatants ever more from the world for whose future they are fighting. The Forever War...

Rendezvous With Rama tells the story of Rama, a vast alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System. A perfect cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly and racing through space, Rama is a technological marvel—an enigmatic alien artefact that captivates the imagination. It is Mankind's first visitor from the stars and must be investigated...

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 fiction, part theological detective story—in which God plays both the missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate...

ENTER THE ADMINISTRATION Peretz 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 this strange organisation. ENTER THE FOREST Candide cannot remember how he got to the Forest, and he is certain he...

The future is a grim place in which the declining human population wanders drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. It's a world without art, reading, and children, a world that people would rather burn themselves alive than endure. Even Spofforth, the most perfect machine ever created, cannot bear it and seeks only that which he cannot have — to cease...

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 a teeming world? Their names include Brahma, Kali, Krishna, and also he who...

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 changed in history. And they find themselves looking at their own worlds with new eyes. Acclaimed as one of the essential...

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 genius could fix almost anything that broke down. But they didn't know they were harbouring the one man who...

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 extraordinary power. Psychiatrist Dr William Haber offers to help. At first sceptical of George's powers,...

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin. For the humans now settling the Amarantin homeworld, it's of little more than academic interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect city and a colossal statue of a winged Amarantin. For brilliant, ruthless scientist Dan Sylveste, it's more than merely intellectual curiosity - and he will stop...

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 he can't find the place he wants to be. He's...

Helliconia is a planet that, due to the massively eccentric orbit of its own sun around another star, experiences seasons that last eons. Whole civilisations grow in the Spring, flourish in the Summer, and then die in the brutal winters. The human-like inhabitants have been profoundly changed by their experience of this harsh cycle. In orbit above the planet, a...