The Daleth Effect


Harry Harrison - 1970
    Other nations (primarily cold war America and Soviet Union) try to acquire this technology, providing much of the tension and the climax of the novel.

Martians, Go Home


Fredric Brown - 1954
    He was the first man to see a Martian...but he wasn't the last!It was estimated that a billion of them had arrived, one to every three human beings on Earth—obnoxious green creatures who could be seen and heard, but not harmed and who probed private sex lives as shamelessly as they probed government secrets.No one knew why they had come. No one knew how to make them go away—except, perhaps, Luke Devereaux. Unfortunately Devereaux was going slightly bananas, so it wouldn't be easy.But for a science-fiction writer nothing was impossible...

A Gift from Earth


Larry Niven - 1968
    The organ banks are the centre of this world. To them the subservient colonists contribute living limbs, and from them the overlords obtain the vital parts that keep them alive.

Rediscovery


Marion Zimmer Bradley - 1993
    Although this is the event she has long dreamed of—for her laran is so strong that she has been able to use it without benefit of training or the need of a matrix crystal—and she yearns for the power which will come to her if she succeeds in becoming a Keeper, she is deeply disturbed. For she is plagued by a terrifying premonition that haunts her days and disrupts her nights, the inescapable feeling that something is about to happen—something monumental and dangerous which will descend upon her world and change it utterly. And all she knows for certain is that this something will be coming from one of Darkover’s four moons…

The Black Sun


Jack Williamson - 1997
    As the final ship of Project Starseed makes its landing on the dead star, the colonists venture out to search the area, only to discover something shocking hidden in the ice.

Wine of the Dreamers


John D. MacDonald - 1951
    A story of world conflict that is bound to grip you.

The Reefs of Space


Frederik Pohl - 1963
    The Reefs of Space brings humanity to the brink of the stars. Steve Ryeland, enslaved by Earth's tyrannical Plan of Man computer, is given the world's most important job—to develop a "jetless drive," an extraordinary new space propulsion mechanism. Yet the most important thing on Steve's mind was not his work, but the iron collar locked securely around his neck. Filled with a lethal charge of explosives, it could be detonated any time the Plan of Man considered him too much of a risk. That's why he had to obey every order, and succeed at his experiments. Only then, perhaps, could he use the jetless drive himself… and escape to the safety of the half-mythical Reefs of Space, strange formations rumored to exist somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto. But if he failed, the next step would be the Living Body Bank—a scientific horror chamber from which no one ever returned. (1st published in World of IF Science Fiction magazine, 1963)

David Starr, Space Ranger


Paul French - 1952
    The vital foodstuffs supplied by its Martian colony are being poisoned. Working in secret, the ruling Council of Science sends David Starr, its youngest member, to the Martian farmlands to discover the truth behind the murders...

Earth


David Brin - 1990
    As scientists frantically work to prevent the ultimate disaster, they discover that the entire planet could be destroyed within a year. But while they look for an answer, some claim that the only way to save Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to reset the evolutionary clock and start over.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus


Gene Wolfe - 1972
    It is said a race of shapeshifters once lived here, only to perish when men came. But one man believes they can still be found, somewhere in the back of the beyond.In The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Wolfe skillfully interweaves three bizarre tales to create a mesmerizing pattern: the harrowing account of the son of a mad genius who discovers his hideous heritage; a young man's mythic dreamquest for his darker half; the bizarre chronicle of a scientists' nightmarish imprisonment. Like an intricate, braided knot, the pattern at last unfolds to reveal astonishing truths about this strange and savage alien landscape.

More Than Human


Theodore Sturgeon - 1953
    There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and Gerry, who has everything it takes to run the world except for a conscience. Separately, they are talented freaks. Together, they compose a single organism that may represent the next step in evolution, and the final chapter in the history of the human race.In this genre-bending novel - among the first to have launched scifi into the arena of literature - one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul. For as the protagonists of More Than Human struggle to find who they are and whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it. Theodore Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging, with suspense, pathos, and a lyricism rarely seen in science fiction.

Schismatrix Plus


Bruce Sterling - 1996
    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

The Golden Apples of the Sun


Ray Bradbury - 1953
    He saw the skin peel from the rocket beehive, men thus revealed running, running, mouths shrieking, soundless. Space was a black mossed well where life drowned its roars and terrors. Scream a big scream, but space snuffed it out before it was half up your throat. Men scurried, ants in a flaming matchbox; the ship was dripping lava, gushing steam, nothing!Journey with the century's most popular fantasy writer into a world of wonder and horror beyond your wildest dreams.Contents:- The Fog Horn (1951)- The Pedestrian (1951)- The April Witch (1952)- The Wilderness (1952)- The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl (1948)- Invisible Boy (1945)- The Flying Machine (1953)- The Murderer (1953)- The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind (1953)- I See You Never (1947)- Embroidery (1951)- The Big Black and White Game (1945)- A Sound of Thunder (1952)- The Great Wide World Over There (1952)- Powerhouse (1948)- En la Noche (1952)- Sun and Shadow (1953)- The Meadow (1953)- The Garbage Collector (1953)- The Great Fire (1949)- Hail and Farewell (1953)- The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

Destination: Void


Frank Herbert - 1966
    An emergency skeleton crew sees only one chance for survival: to create an artificial consciousness in the Earthling's primary computer, which could guide them to their destination . . . or could destroy the human race. Frank Herbert's classic novel that begins the epic Pandora Sequence (written with Bill Ransom), which also includes The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor.

Not This August


C.M. Kornbluth - 1955
    Males either farm or are drafted. Billy Justin, a 38-year-old commercial artist & Korea War veteran works as a dairy farmer in Chiunga Ctr, NY when he hears over the radio that Soviet & Chinese forces have overrun American lines. Over the next months, they consolidate their hold, dividing the US at the Mississippi, forming between them the Democratic People's Republic of N America. Other than a garrison, disarmament & establishment of food production quotas, the surrender leaves Chiunga Center largely untouched. A paraplegic comes to Justin's farm asking for work. He's given make-work, then leaves. When Justin enters the nearest town, Norton, for supplies, he's drawn into a conspiracy with the paraplegic & others. The former turns out to be an army general. Buried in Chiunga County is a half-finished weapons satellite that requires parts & technical know-how to orbit it. The Soviet military police soon apparently capture all of them but himself & the general. Receiving messages hidden in mail Betsy Cardew delivers, Justin deduces that the contacts he needs are in Washington, PA. With a traveling preacher, Sparhawk, he walks from Chiunga to Washington. Arrested by a military patrol, they're separated. Justin attempts to pass himself as one of Sparhawk's converts who can't be molested due to the Democratic Republic's freedom of religion. He & Sparhawk are exiled at the town border & soon arrive at Washington. He's given instructions about an assault planned for Xmas Eve on Chiunga Ctr to liberate the satellite. He & Sparhawk are sent back there with a specialist. Despite Soviet torture of a local farmer, they're kept ignorant of what "Xmas Eve", a mild oath they hear sworn by citizens, means til battle begins. Coordinated by Gen Hollerith, the paraplegic, area bridges are blown up & arsenals sabotaged as townspeople are armed & fight as the satellite is launched. Hollerith's forces triumph. A radio message declares the satellite will destroy Moscow & Peiking in 24 hours if occupation soldiers don't evacuate American soil & release war prisoners. Hollerith offers Justin high position, but he declines to kneel in prayer with Sparhawk, fearing mutual assured destruction.