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 was called Buddha, the Lord of Light, but who now prefers to be kno
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 consequences. Humans and aliens alike must
Jason Taverner is a Six, the result of top secret government experiments forty years before which produced a handful of unnaturally bright and beautiful people ' and he's the prime-time idol of millions until, inexplicably, all record of him is wiped from the data banks of Earth. Suddenly he's a nobody in a police state where nobody is allowed to be a nobody.
Poul Anderson's Tau Zero is an outstanding work of science fiction, in part because it combines two qualities that are often at odds in this genre: an interest in the emotional lives of its characters and a fascination with all things technological and scientific
For a million years the bubble had been growing, like a vast abscess, below the root of the mountains. Now the abscess was about to burst. Captain Harris had left the controls on autopilot and was talking to the front row of passengers as the first tremor shook the boat.
Businessman Arnie Kott, who controls the water supply to his fellow homesteaders on Mars, hires recovering schizophrenic Jack to communicate with an autistic child who has psychic powers, hoping he will uncover the UN’s intentions regarding Martian land. Philip K Dick’s exploration of mental illness, colonialism and authority was first published in 1964.
In California’s Orange County undercover narcotics agent Bob Arctor is tasked with finding the source of Substance D, a drug that leads to irreversible brain damage, but to do so convincingly he must experience its effects first-hand. As he observes his housemates via a series of holo-scanners it becomes clear that his own neurological state is deteriorating.
Fourteen strangers came to Delmak-O. Thirteen of them were transferred by the usual authorities. One got there by praying. But once they arrived on that planet whose very atmosphere seemed to induce paranoia and psychosis, the newcomers found that even prayer was useless. For on Delmak-O, God is either absent or intent on destroying His creations.
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 almost everyone left alive wanted killed...
When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business.
And where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?
Anton is an undercover operative from future Earth, who travels to an alien world whose culture has not progressed beyond the Middle Ages. Although in possession of far more advanced knowledge than the society around him, he is forbidden to interfere with the natural progress of history. His place is to observe rather than interfere - but can he remain aloof in the face of so much cruelty and inju
H.G. Wells' great novel of the dangers of science describes a man cast out from society by his own terrifying discovery.
THE INVISIBLE MAN tells the story of Griffin, a brilliant and obsessed scientist dedicated to achieving invisibility. Taking whatever action is necessary to keep his incredible discovery safe, he terrorises the local village where he has sought refuge. Wells skilfully weaves
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 science-fiction literature and has proved hug
'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 with heatrays - that are impervious to attack. Advancing upon London they
'As we saw it first it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes. We were in an enormous amphitheatre, a vast circular plain, the floor of the giant crater. Its cliff-like wall closed us in on every side¿'
Thanks to the discovery of an anti-gravity metal, Cavorite, two Victorian Englishman decide to tackle the most prestigious goal - space travel. They construct a sphere that will ultimately