Science fiction Books 211 results

Adrian Tchaikovsky

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age--a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne dis...

Cixin Liu

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him t...

Ursula K. Le Guin

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

James S. A. Corey

3. For generations, the solar system was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark. Jim Holden and his crew are part of a flotilla of ships going out to examine the artifact. As the emissaries of the human race try ...

Emily St. John Mandel

From the New York Times bestselling author of Station Eleven Lilia has been leaving people behind her entire life. Haunted by her inability to remember her early childhood, and by a mysterious shadow that seems to dog her wherever she goes, Lilia moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers and friends along the way. But then she meets Eli, and he's not ready to let h...

Jeff Vandermeer

'Pure reading pleasure' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'Genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing' GUARDIAN 'Powerful and echoing' NEW STATESMAN A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER With an introduction by Helen MacDonald Area X has rebuffed expedition after expedition for decades, refusing to reveal its secrets. As it expands alarmingly, the Southern Reach agency tasked with its investig...

Jeff Vandermeer

'Astonishing, frightening, spectacular' NEW STATESMAN 'A lasting monument to the uncanny' GUARDIAN 'Chilling' NEW YORK TIMES A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER With an introduction by N. K. Jemisin After thirty years, the secret government agency known as the Southern Reach has been unable to solve the mysteries of Area X, a seemingly malevolent landscape wiped clean of human civili...

Becky Chambers

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEY'S WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 'A quietly profound, humane tour de force' Guardian The beloved debut novel that will restore your faith in humanity #SmallAngryPlanet When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The ship, which has seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to ...

Pierce Brown

Darrow is a Helldiver, one of a thousand men and women who live in the vast caves beneath the surface of Mars, generations of people who spend their lives toiling to mine the precious elements that will allow the planet to be terraformed. Just knowing that, one day, people will be able to walk the surface of the planet is enough to justify their sacrifice. The Earth is dying, a...

Max Barry

Two years ago, something terrible was unleashed in an Australian mining town called Broken Hill. Thousands died. Few people know what really happened. Emily Ruff is one of them. She belongs to an elite organisation of 'poets': masters of manipulation who use language to warp others to their will. She was one of their most promising recruits until she made a catastrophic mistake...

Philip K. Dick

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 al...

John Scalzi

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, and Andrew is even more delighted when he's assigned to the ship's xenobiology laboratory. Life couldn't be better - although there are a few strange things going on ...

Orson Scott Card

Achieves and delivers more than almost anything else within the science fiction genre, Ender's Game is a contemporary classic - New York Times 'Card's prose is powerful here, as is his consideration of mystical and quasi-religious themes. Though billed as the final Ender novel, this story leaves enough mysteries unexplored to justify another entry; and Card fans should find th...

James S. A. Corey

NOW A PRIME ORIGINAL SERIES Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the New York Times bestselling and Hugo-award winning Expanse series - over 7 million copies sold worldwide. 'Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be' George R. R. Martin Humanity has colonised the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach. J...

Orson Scott Card

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the sol...

Richard Matheson

"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 infected with a vampire bacillus 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 dawn. How long can one man survive l...

Joe Haldeman

Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself--a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand--despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. ...

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy - a riveting saga of humanity's struggle against darkness played out on the grandest scale - is one of the cornerstones of modern science fiction. It is the story of the Galactic Empire, crumbling after twelve thousand years of rule. And it is the particular story of psycho-historian Hari Seldon, the only man who can see the horrors the future ...

Roger Zelazny

"A distant wortd where gods walk as men, but wield vast and hidden powers. 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 known simply as Sam. How has the colonization of another planet become a re-enactment of Eastern r...

Alastair Reynolds

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 merelty intel...

Ayn Rand

A towering philosophical novel that is the summation of her Objectivist philosophy, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is the saga of the enigmatic John Galt, and his ambitious plan to 'stop the motor of the world', published in Penguin Modern Classics.Opening with the enigmatic question 'Who is John Galt?', Atlas Shrugged envisions a world where the 'men of talent' - the great innovato...

Poul Anderson

Fifty men and women set out in the twenty-third century from Earth aboard an interstellar craft to travel to a planet some thirty light-years away. The ship will approach the speed of light and so (as Einstein predicted) subjective time on board will slow and so the journey of several decades will be of much shorter duration for the crew. But the ship's deceleration system is i...

Arthur C. Clarke

"The enigmatic object christened Rama was detected while still outside the orbit of Jupiter. A first radar contact at such a distance was unprecedented, indicating that Rama was of exceptional size. As it raced through the Solar System, it became apparent that Rama was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it might have been turned on a gigantic lathe. Mankind was about to r...

Octavia E. Butler

A perfect introduction for new readers and a must-have for avid fans, this New York Times Notable Book includes "Bloodchild," winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards and "Speech Sounds," winner of the Hugo Award. Appearing in print for the first time, "Amnesty" is a story of a woman named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent relationship between humans a...

Philip K. Dick

Ragle Gumm is an ordinary man leading an ordinary life, except that he makes his living by entering a newspaper contest every day - and winning, every day. But then he begins to suspect that his whole world is an illusion, constructed around him for the purpose of keeping him docile and happy. ...

Arthur Charles Clarke

Clarke's masterful evocation of the far future of humanity, considered his finest novel. ...

Ursula K. Le Guin

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, he comes to astonished...

Philip K. Dick

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. ...

Philip K. Dick

Bob Arctor is a junkie and a drug dealer, both using and selling the mind-altering Substance D. Fred is a law enforcement agent, tasked with bringing Bob down. It sounds like a standard case. The only problem is that Bob and Fred are the same person. Substance D doesn?t just alter the mind, it splits it in two, and neither side knows what the other is doing or that it even exis...

Philip K. Dick

Largely forgotten by Earth, Mars is in the stranglehold of Arnie Kott, who, as boss of the plumber's union, has a monopoly over the vital water supply. Arnie is obsessed by the past; the native Bleekmen can see into the future ; while to Manfred, an autistic boy, time apparently stops. ...