S is for Space


Ray Bradbury - 1966
    S is for science fiction, spine-tingling, supernatural and sublime! S is for stories from a "Star Wilderness that stretched as far as eye and mind could see and imagine".ChrysalisPillar of FireZero HourThe ManTime in Thy FlightThe PedestrianHall and FarewellInvisible BoyCome into My CellarThe Million-Year PicnicThe Screaming WomanThe SmileDark They Were, and Golden-EyedThe TrolleyThe Flying MachineIcarus Montgolfier Wright

Flesh


Philip José Farmer - 1960
    But Earth had become a new world. Where science and technology had reigned, now there were agriculture and tribal warfare. And mankind worshiped the Goddess and was content.Into this New Earth came Peter Stagg. They named him "Sunhero" and worshipped him acoordingly. The secret rites were performed, and Stagg found himself setting out on a cross-country, orgiastic jaunt, with foot-high antlers throbbing on his head and endowed with the virility of a nation.Yes, Space Commander Peter Stagg was the Sunhero, king of the Earth and all its willing women. But how long he would hold his throne, only the Goddess could say...

Notions: Unlimited


Robert Sheckley - 1960
    machines intercepting murderers before they kill... an organization that makes hangover nightmares come true... a killer organism that feeds on atom bombs and thrives on being blown up from time to time! Notions: Unlimited, a fantastic exploration into the galaxies of probability.Contents:Gray Flannel ArmorThe LeechWatchbirdA Wind is RisingMorning AfterThe Native ProblemFeeding TimeParadise IIDouble IndemnityHoldoutDawn InvaderThe Language of Love

Dying of the Light


George R.R. Martin - 1977
    But Worlorn isn’t the world Dirk imagined, and Gwen Delvano is no longer the woman he once knew. She is bound to another man, and to a dying planet that is trapped in twilight. Gwen needs Dirk’s protection, and he will do anything to keep her safe, even if it means challenging the barbaric man who has claimed her. But an impenetrable veil of secrecy surrounds them all, and it’s becoming impossible for Dirk to distinguish between his allies and his enemies. In this dangerous triangle, one is hurtling toward escape, another toward revenge, and the last toward a brutal, untimely demise.

Cities in Flight


James Blish - 1970
    Named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and anti-gravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's most inimitable writers.A Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club

A Coming of Age


Timothy Zahn - 1984
    but the planet had a horrifying effect on their children. Babies born there developed frightening telekinetic powers at the age of five. No one could control them -- and as the changelings grew and became aware of their abilities they initiated a bloodbath of chaos and violence that nearly destroyed the planet.Two centuries after the Lost Generation, Tigrins have learned to cope with their strange planet and its effects. But a new threat is rising. In secret a medical researcher is experimenting with the TK ability. His guinea pigs are stolen children; his object, to extend their powers past adolescence and into adulthood. If he succeeds, Tigris faces disintegration.

Planets for Sale


A.E. van Vogt - 1954
    Menaced by a terrifying array of lethal forces, Blord risked his life against alien aggressors as well as more human adversaries.Never knowing at what moment death might overtake him, he fought to fulfill a dream; that he might one day claim the title that riches couldn't buy: Master of the Ridge Stars!Originally published in 1954. It is based on these short stories, all by E. Mayne Hull: Competition (1943) The Contract (1944) The Debt (1943) Bankruptcy Proceedings (1946) Enter the Professor (1945)

The Deathworms of Kratos


Richard Avery - 1975
    . .Their first destination was Kratos. It seemed almost ideally suited for colonization. But before interplanetary settlers could begin arriving, they had to know what caused the deep ruts and throbbing domes that marred the planet's surface.The Expendables hadn't reckoned with powerful creatures capable of constructing hills bigger than the pyramids of Egypt. Colossal snake-like beings that swayed and roared. Hostile life forms that could destroy their mission--and them.

An Alien Light


Nancy Kress - 1987
    In order to defeat the humans, the Ged must first understand them. So they go to a world called Qom, where a lost Earth colony has forgotten its origins & regressed to pre-industrial society. They are split into two warring city-states: Delysia, town of merchants, & Jela of Spartan wariors. The Ged build a walled city out in the wilderness, promising riches & new weapons for anyone brave enough to stay in the city one year. The offer attracts a diverse collection of outcasts & adventurers, Jelite warriors & Delysian artisans. Once inside, they're taught the secrets of science & technology. In watching them learn, the Ged hope to find out how humans think. But they don’t anticipate the few humans who will cross feudal boundaries to unite against the Ged, deducing more than the Ged meant to teach about the nature of the universe & the origin of humans on Qom.

In the Days of the Comet


H.G. Wells - 1906
    But mankind is too busy hating, stealing, scheming, and killing to care. As luminous green trails of cosmic dust and vapor stream across the heavens, blood flows beneath: nations wage all-out war, bitter strikes erupt, and jealous lovers plot revenge and murder. The earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different. An ill-fated romance between Willie Leadford and Nettie Stuart unfolds in a world buried in misery and bent on its own destruction. After the earth passes through the comet's tail, suffering, pettiness, and injustice melt away. Willie, Nettie, and everyone around them are reborn. They now see themselves and their world in a dramatically new and wonderful way.

The Planet on the Table


Kim Stanley Robinson - 1986
    There would never be another departure like it.And aboard one of the ships was Manuel Tetuan, a young Moroccan orphan shanghaied from a Franciscan monastery. “Black Air” is the multiple award nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning novelette of Manuel’s beatific innocence, of his compassion in the face of war, and of the miracles that enabled him to survive the tragedy of the doomed Armada.Robinson’s extraordinary range of interests is demonstrated in haunting stories of: tourists looting the beautiful, sunken ruins of Venice; an amoral future sleuth who, with her bumbling Watson, must find the forger of Monets on a planet of wealthy esthetes; three friends, one brain-damaged, who confront eternity and subtle magic in the snowbound Sierras; a repertoire company of hypnotically trained, surgically altered actors, and an unknown psychopath whose murders mock the scripts of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; the historic effects of the Second World War’s last traitor, the pilot who deliberately fails to A-bomb Hiroshima; impoverished Uranian miners who seek fame in an interplanetary music competition by reviving an ancient, lost form—Dixieland Jazz; and a dilapidated Arizona grill-souvenir shop that becomes the focus of a drifter’s encounters with Time and destiny.

The Immortals


James E. Gunn - 1962
    That he will never contract a disease, an infection, or even a cold. That because he will never die, he must surrender the right to live.For Dr. Russell Pearce, the price is eternal suspicion. He appreciates what synthesizing the elixir vitae from the Immortal’s genetic makeup could mean for humankind. He also fears what will happen should Cartwright’s miraculous blood fall into the wrong hands.For the wealthy and powerful, no price is too great. Immortality is now a fact rather than a dream. But the only way to achieve it is to own it exclusively. And that means hunting down and caging the elusive Cartwright, or one of his offspring.

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.

Hard Sell


Piers Anthony - 1982
    Fisk Centers has it made: a personal fortune of three million dollars enables him, at the tender ages of 50, to take an early retirement and enjoy all the comforts 21st-century Earth has to offer. Then he gets a call from Mars Ltd. offering him a real-estate deal that sounds too good to be true. It is. Now penniless and unemployed, Centers will do anything to make a buck. . . . Previous publisher: Tafford.

Songs of Earth and Power


Greg Bear - 1984
    Now Michael faces years of captivity and deadly struggles for the future of the Realm and of Earth--leading finally to a terrible confrontation on the streets of Los Angeles, with the soul of humanity at stake.Weaving the power of music, poetry, and myth into a headlong narrative of nearly overwhelming intensity, Song of Earth and Power is one of the most original fantasy epics of our time, a vast tapestry of relentless suspense, terrible beauty, and brilliant imagination. Originally published years ago in two parts, it now returns in a new edition rewritten by the author and published in a single volume as he originally intended. Wrote Analog on its original appearance: "A delight....A vision of Faery that may owe a bit to a wish to do it right. Read it."