120,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

🌸 Our Spring Sale is here! Save on Books, Toys, & Puzzles! With overnight NZ-wide delivery 🎉

Thirteen

By Richard Morgan
Series: S.F. MASTERWORKS
0.0 (0 reviews)
Brief Description
"This is writing with the brakes off and the adrenaline pumped to high" - Liz Holiday, SCI-FI NOW "... a cracking thriller which achieves the tricky sci-fi balancing act feeling relevant and accessible" - Amazon Reviewer One hundred years from now, against all odds, Earth has... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK Please add to wishlist to be notified when back in stock

Sorry, we're currently out of stock of Thirteen. Please add to your Wishlist and we'll send you an email as soon as it's back in stock.

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2008

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

"This is writing with the brakes off and the adrenaline pumped to high" - Liz Holiday, SCI-FI NOW

"... a cracking thriller which achieves the tricky sci-fi balancing act feeling relevant and accessible" - Amazon Reviewer

One hundred years from now, against all odds, Earth has found a new stability; the political order has reached a tentative balance, and the new colony on Mars is growing. But the fraught years of the 21st century have left an uneasy legacy...

As genetically engineered alpha males, Thirteens were designed to be the ultimate military fighting force but, with no wars to fight, they find themselves surplus to requirements. Many of the Thirteens have left for Mars, but now one has returned, killing everyone on the shuttle on which he arrived.

Only Carl Marsalis, one of the Thirteen, can hunt him down. So begins a frantic manhunt, a battle of survival, and a search for the truth about what was really done with the world's last soldiers.

Thirteen (previously published as Black Man) is an unstoppable SF thriller about the ramifications of playing with genetic blueprints. It is also a novel about prejudice, and the human capacity for violence, deceit, and corruption.

Series: S.F. MASTERWORKS

View all
  • Flowers For Algernon
    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...
    By Daniel Keyes
    Paperback
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Dispossessed
    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...
    By Ursula K. Le Guin
    Paperback
    $2200
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • On Sale
    15% off
    The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
    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...
    By Douglas Adams
    Hardback
    $3400
    Usually:
    $3999
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Left Hand of Darkness
    '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...
    By Ursula K. Le Guin
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Hiero's Journey
    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...
    By Sterling E. Lanier
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $2999
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Left Hand of Darkness
    '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...
    By Ursula K. Le Guin
    Paperback
    $2300
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Fire Upon the Deep
    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...
    By Vernor Vinge
    Paperback
    $2300
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Roadside Picnic
    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...
    By Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Book of the New Sun: Volume 2
    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...
    By Gene Wolfe
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $2999
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A Deepness in the Sky
    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....
    By Vernor Vinge
    Paperback
    $2200
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Rendezvous With Rama
    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...
    By Sir Arthur C. Clarke
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
    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...
    By Douglas Adams
    Hardback
    $3999
    In Stock
    Ships today

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781399640374

Publisher: Orion Publishing Co

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 14 May 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Gateway

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 46.0mm

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 460g

Pages: 656

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Richard Morgan Sci-Fi & Fantasy Science Fiction Series: S.F. Masterworks Series: S.F. MASTERWORKS

About the Author

Richard Morgan was, until his writing career took off, a tutor at Strathclyde University in the English Language Teaching division. He has travelled widely and lived in Spain and Istanbul. He is a fluent Spanish speaker. Winner of the Athur C. Clarke, John W. Campbell and Philip K. Dick Awards his books are published around the world. He lives in Norwich with his family.

Also by Richard Morgan

View all
  • Woken Furies
    This is high action, ideas-driven noir SF of the highest order. Morgan has already established himself as an SF author of global significance. Woken Furies sees Takeshi Kovacs return home to Harlan's World — an ocean planet with only 5 percent of its landmass poking above the dangerous and unpredictable seas. Try and get above the weather in anything more...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    $2999
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Market Forces
    Chris Faulkner has just landed the job of his dreams. But Shorn Associates are market leaders in Conflict Investment. They expect results, they expect the best. Chris has one very high-profile kill to his name already, but he will have to drive hard and go for kill after kill if he's to keep his bosses happy. All he has to...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    $10000
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • Broken Angels
    Fifty years after the events of Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs is serving as a mercenary in the Procterate-sponsored war to put down Joshuah Kemp's revolution on the planet Sanction IV. He is offered the chance to join a covert team chasing a prize whose value is limitless - and whose dangers are endless. Here is a novel that takes mankind...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • Thin Air
    Richard Morgan has always been one of our most successful SF authors with his fast-moving and brutal storylines, blistering plots, and a powerful social conscience behind his work. And now he's back, with his first SF novel for eight years, and it promises to be a publication to remember. An ex-corporate enforcer, Hakan Veil, is forced to bodyguard Madison Madekwe,...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • The Dark Defiles
    Compared to Michael Moorcock and Joe Abercrombie alike, Richard Morgan's fast-moving and brutal science fantasy reaches its final volume as Ringil comes to his final reckoning and sees the world tipping into another war with the dragon folk. And, most terrifying of all, the prophecy of a dark lord come to rule may be coming true very close to home......
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • Altered Carbon
    This must-read story is a confident, action-and-violence packed thriller, and future classic noir SF novel from a multi-award-winning author. Four hundred years from now mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilization discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • Altered Carbon
    Four hundred years from now, mankind is strung out across a region of interstellar space inherited from an ancient civilisation discovered on Mars. The colonies are linked together by the occasional sublight colony ship voyages and hyperspatial data-casting. Human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies as a matter of course. But some things never change....
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • No Man's Land
    The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars—and maybe it would have been, had an even greater, otherworldly foe not arisen to extinguish the conflict. Overnight, as guns blazed away in France and Flanders, village after village in the quiet British countryside were swallowed by the Forest. And within the Forest lurk the Huldu—an ancient...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • The Steel Remains
    Ringil, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap, is a legend to all who don’t know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteran of the wars against the lizards, he makes a living by telling credulous travellers of his exploits—until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • The Cold Commands
    Ringil Eskiath, scarred wielder of the Kiriath-forged broadsword Ravensfriend, is a man on the run—from his past and the family who have disowned him, from the slave trade magnates of Trelayne who want him dead, and apparently from the dark gods themselves, who are taking an interest but making no more sense than they ever have. Outlawed and exiled from...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • Thirteen
    One hundred years from now, and against all the odds, Earth has found a new stability; the political order has reached some sort of balance, and the new colony on Mars is growing. But the fraught years of the 21st century have left an uneasy legacy... Genetically engineered alpha males, designed to fight the century's wars, have no wars to...
    By Richard Morgan
    Paperback
    Sold Out

More from Sci-Fi & Fantasy

View all
  • New Release
    Scion
    ‘Scion’ is an electrifying sci-fi thriller that follows a contract killer tasked with protecting a scientist from assassination, only to find himself in the crosshairs. My name’s Azure. I kill rich idiots for a living. All completely legal, of course, even if it does still make the old-fashioned crowd a bit uncomfortable. Once the ultra-wealthy realised they had a way...
    By James Islington
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Massif
    New Release
    Massif
    Caught me a mountain Rode it to the stars It's business as usual for Ship Leader Parnell Shi-Sawahla and the crew of the corvette Sassafras. Ride a Massif to a new system, fight the enemy, repeat. For more than two hundred years, humans have been hitching rides on these sentient, starfaring mountain ranges, colonising planets and exporting an on-again, off-again...
    By Garth Nix
    Paperback
    $3299
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Project Hail Mary
    Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, the SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of The Martian, offers a gripping new adventure in hard science fiction. With endorsement from notable figures such as Barack Obama and a slew of five-star reviews, this novel promises a thrilling and intellectually stimulating journey. Ryland Grace, a lone astronaut, finds himself on a...
    By Andy Weir
    Paperback
    $2399
    Elsewhere:
    $2400
    (5)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Strength of the Few
    The highly anticipated follow-up to The Will of the Many—one of 2023's most lauded and bestselling fantasy novels. The Hierarchy still call me Vis Telimus. They still, as one, believe they know who I am. But with all that has happened—with what I fear is coming—I am not sure it matters anymore. I am no longer one. I won the...
    By James Islington
    Paperback
    $2899
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Red Rising
    The first book in the incredible New York Times bestselling series Darrow is a Helldiver, toiling beneath the surface of Mars. As a member of the Red caste, he performs grueling labor in the belief that his sacrifice will enable future generations to one day inhabit the surface of the Red Planet. The Reds are humankind's lowest caste, living in...
    By Pierce Brown
    Paperback
    $2200
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Crossroads of Ravens
    THE GLOBAL PHENOMENON RETURNS... Every legend has an origin - and Geralt of Rivia's begins here. In this brand-new chapter of Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher series, follow Geralt in his earliest days as a Witcher, as he faces monsters and humans alike. Discover the untold stories and encounters that shaped the iconic character known today. Crossroads of Ravens brings readers into...
    By Andrzej Sapkowski
    Paperback
    $2899
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Wind and Truth
    The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the Number One New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive. Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson sees Dalinar Kholin challenge the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare, and the sudden ascension of the...
    By Brandon Sanderson
    Paperback
    $3100
    Elsewhere:
    $3999
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Ministry of Time
    One of the 18 best novels of the year for the Sunday Times A book of the year for the New York Times, Guardian, Independent, Evening Standard, Spectator, Red, NPR, Vanity Fair, People, Slate, Advocate, Sydney Morning Herald, Globe and Mail, Den of Geek, Good Housekeeping, Goodreads, NetGalley and Smithsonian Magazine 'A sparkling delight' Observer 'Make room on your bookshelves...
    By Kaliane Bradley
    Paperback
    $2399
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Assassin’s Apprentice
    Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb marks the beginning of an extraordinary adventure in the rich and immersive world of the Six Duchies. Set against the backdrop of a kingdom teetering on the brink of civil war, this gripping tale introduces readers to FitzChivalry Farseer, a royal bastard whose existence threatens the stability of the crown. When the crown prince's secret...
    By Robin Hobb
    Paperback
    $1900
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • I Who Have Never Known Men
    A haunting, heartbreaking tale of female friendship and intimacy that evokes the chilling atmospheres of The Handmaid's Tale and the desolate landscapes of The Road, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is a story that lingers long after the last page is turned. This gripping narrative takes us deep underground, where thirty-nine women are held in isolation...
    By Jacqueline Harpman
    Paperback
    $2800
    Elsewhere:
    $3299
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Colour Illustrated Hobbit
    The Colour Illustrated Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien is a timeless classic that has enchanted readers for generations. This beloved tale follows Bilbo Baggins, a peace-loving hobbit from the quaint and picturesque Shire, who finds himself thrust into an epic journey far from the comforts of his cosy home. Charming and lively illustrations by Jemima Catlin breathe new life...
    By J. R. R. Tolkien
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $2999
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Blood Over Bright Haven
    A riveting dark academia fantasy about the limits of truth and power, from the author of The Sword of Kaigen. The first woman ever admitted to a prestigious order of mages unravels a secret conspiracy that could change the practice of magic forever, in this standalone dark fantasy from the author of The Sword of Kaigen. For twenty years, Sciona...
    By M. L. Wang
    Paperback
    $3400
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy lists from the team

Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!

The Latest at Book Hero

View all