Important Early Works of Science Fiction
Explore the most important early works of science fiction that shaped the genre. Discover classic books from visionary authors that pioneered futuristic themes and inspired modern sci-fi.
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The Moon Pool
by Abraham Merritt
On the island of Ponape in the South Pacific, the cold light of a full moon washes over the crumbling ruins of an ancient, vanished civilization. Unleashed from the depths is the Dweller, a glittering, enigmatic force of monstrous terror and radiant beauty that stalks the South Pacific, claiming all in its path. An international expedition led by American Walter Goodwin races to save those who have fallen victim to the Dweller. The dark mystery behind the malevolent force is Muria, a forgotten, mythic world deep within the earth that is home to a legendary people intent on reclaiming what was theirs long ago. This commemorative edition of The Moon Pool features an introduction by Robert Silverberg, a review of the first edition, and a glossary of the Murian language.
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The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
An English astronomer, in company with an artilleryman, a country curate, and others, struggle to survive the invasion of Earth by Martians in 1894.
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The Land that Time Forgot
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
One of the most popular and influential science fiction tales of all time, The Land That Time Forgot was first published in book form in 1924. Set on the lost island of Caspak in the South Pacific, this novel is a dazzling blend of imagination, daring adventure, and intriguing scientific speculation. Hidden behind towering, impassable cliffs, Caspak will not easily give up its secrets. Unique and terrible animals and peoples inhabit the island. Dinosaurs terrorize tropical jungles to the south, while menacing winged humanoids dwell in cities on a large island in the north. Caught between these threats are scattered groups of human beings. Despite their differences, however, Caspak’s animals and peoples are all connected in a mysterious and marvelous way. This commemorative edition features the entire Caspak trilogy in one volume, as intended by the author. In his introduction, Mike Resnick celebrates Edgar Rice Burroughs and the timeless appeal of this story. Also included are Scott Tracy Griffin’s glossary of terms from the Caspakian language, a rare map of Caspak drawn by Burroughs, and the classic J. Allen St. John illustrations.
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Tarzan at the Earth's Core
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The fourth installment in the Pelludicar series from the legendary creator of Tarzan.
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Darker Than You Think
by Jack Williamson
Who is the child of the night? That's what small-town reported Will Barbee must find out. Inexorably drawn into investigating a rash of grisly deaths, he soon finds himself embroiled in something far beyond mortal understanding. Doggedly pursuing his investigations, he meets the mysterious and seductive April Bell and starts having disturbing, tantalizing dreams in which he does terrible things--things that are stranger and wilder than his worst nightmares. then his friends being dying one by one and he slowly realizes that an unspeakable evil has been unleashed. As Barbee's world crumbles around him in a dizzying blizzard of madness, the intoxicating, dangerous April pushes Barbee ever closer to the answer to the question "Who is the Child of Night?" When Barbee finds out, he'll wish he'd never been born.
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Lorelei of the Red Mist
by Leigh Brackett
Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances is the companion volume to Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, a volume that collected the First twenty published stories by the ?undisputed Queen of ?Space Opera.? ?With the stories in this volume, Brackett takes the foundation of the Fictional universe established in her early work, and populates these worlds with colorful characters and locales teeming with adventure and intrigue. Here, hard-bitten and cynical rogues risk (and sometimes lose) all to battle stellar horrors, escape from decadent tyrannies, and yes, rescue the girl.During the timeframe when these stories were written, Brackett First broke into writing screenplays for Hollywood. With only modest success for Republic Pictures, it was on the strength of her First mystery novel that she was offered to co-author the screenplay for Warner Bros.? The Big Sleep with William Faulkner by director Howard Hawks.Appropriately, Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances features an introduction by a protege of Leigh Brackett, a one-time collaborator (on this volume?s title story) and 2004 recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Ray Bradbury.
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The Girl in the Golden Atom
by Ray Cummings
A classic work of science fiction, this novel was one of the first to explore the world of the atom. The Girl in the Golden Atom is the story of a young chemist who finds a hidden atomic world within his mother?s wedding ring. Under a microscope, he sees within the ring a beautiful young woman sitting before a cave. Enchanted by her, he shrinks himself so that he can join her world. ø Having worked for Thomas Alva Edison, Ray Cummings (1887?1957) was inspired by science?s possibilities and began to write science fiction. The Girl in the Golden Atom was enormously successful at its publication in 1923, and Cummings went on to write an equally successful sequel, The People of the Golden Atom. Both volumes are featured in this Bison Books edition, along with a new introduction by Jack Williamson.
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Gladiator
by Philip Wylie
Hugo Danner is the strongest man on Earth due to an experiment conducted by his father, a scientist, but he is doomed to live a life of alienation because of his special strength and abilities. Reprint.
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Tarzan Alive
by Philip Josä Farmer
Through the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, generations of readers have thrilled to the adventures of Lord Greystoke (aka John Clayton, but better known as Tarzan of the Apes). In this biography Philip Josä Farmer pieces together the life of this fantastic man, correcting Burroughs?s errors and deliberate deceptions and tracing Tarzan's family tree back to other extraordinary figures, including Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Doc Savage, Nero Wolfe, and Bulldog Drummond. øTarzan Alive offers the first chronological account of Tarzan's life, narrated in careful detail garnered from Burroughs?s stories and other sources. From the ill-fated voyage that led to Greystoke's birth on the isolated African coast to his final adventures as a group captain in the RAF during World War II, Farmer constructs a comprehensive and authoritative account. Farmer?s assertion that Tarzan was a real person has led him to craft a biography as well researched and compelling as that of any character from conventional history. This definitive Bison Books edition also includes Farmer?s ?Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke? as well as ?Extracts from the Memoirs of ?Lord Greystoke?? first anthologized in Mother Was a Lovely Beast.
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A Voyage to Arcturus
by David Lindsay
A stunning achievement in speculative fiction, A Voyage to Arcturus has inspired, enchanted, and unsettled readers for decades. It is simultaneously an epic quest across one of the most unusual and brilliantly depicted alien worlds ever conceived, a profoundly moving journey of discovery into the metaphysical heart of the universe, and a shockingly intimate excursion into what makes us human and unique.øAfter a strange interstellar journey, Maskull, a man from Earth, awakens alone in a desert on the planet Tormance, seared by the suns of the binary star Arcturus. As he journeys northward, guided by a drumbeat, he encounters a world and its inhabitants like no other, where gender is a victory won at dear cost; where landscape and emotion are drawn into an accursed dance; where heroes are killed, reborn, and renamed; and where the cosmological lures of Shaping, who may be God, torment Maskull in his astonishing pilgrimage. At the end of his arduous and increasingly mystical quest waits a dark secret and an unforgettable revelation.øA Voyage to Arcturus was the first novel by writer David Lindsay (1878?1945), and it remains one of the most revered classics of science fiction. This commemorative edition features an introduction by noted scholar and writer of speculative fiction John Clute and a famous essay by Loren Eiseley.
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The Absolute at Large
by Karel ?apek
In this satirical classic, a brilliant scientist invents the Karburator, a reactor that can create abundant and practically free energy. However, the Karburator?s superefficient energy production also yields a powerful by-product. The machine works by completely annihilating matter and in so doing releases the Absolute, the spiritual essence held within all matter, into the world. Infected by the heady, pure Absolute, the world?s population becomes consumed with religious and national fervor, the effects of which ultimately cause a devastating global war. Set in the mid-twentieth century, The Absolute at Large questions the ethics and rampant spread of power, mass production, and atomic weapons that Karel Capek saw in the technological and political revolutions occurring around him. Stephen Baxter provides an introduction for this Bison Books edition.
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The Purple Cloud
by Matthew Phipps Shiel
"If now a swell from the Deep has swept over this planetary ship of earth, and I, who alone chanced to find myself in the furthest stern, as the sole survivor of her crew . . . What then, my God, shall I do?" The Purple Cloud is widely hailed as a masterpiece of science fiction and one of the best "last man" novels ever written. A deadly purple vapor passes over the world and annihilates all living creatures except one man, Adam Jeffson. He embarks on an epic journey across a silent and devastated planet, an apocalyptic Robinson Crusoe putting together the semblance of a normal life from the flotsam and jetsam of his former existence. As he descends into madness over the years, he becomes increasingly aware that his survival was no accident and that his destiny?and the fate of the human race?are part of a profound, cosmological plan.
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The Wonder
by John Davys Beresford
"Long recognized as a classic of speculative fiction but never before widely available, The Wonder is one of the first novels about a "superman.""--BOOK JACKET.
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The Last Man
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The Last Man ends in 2100, "the last year of the world." A devastating plague has wiped out humanity, except for one man. This novel of horror, originally published in 1826, was rejected in its time and out of print from 1833 to 1963, when the first Bison Books edition appeared. Some critics now rate The Last Man more highly than Frankenstein, by the same author. This Bison Books edition offers aønew introduction by Anne K. Mellor, who writes, "In our era of AIDS and biological warfare, Shelley's apocalyptic vision of an incurable plague that gradually destroys the entire human species resonates with mythic power."
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The Nightmare, and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy
by Francis Stevens
Slithering from these pages are never-before-collected tales of suspense and wonder by the woman who invented modern-day dark fantasy: A man goes quietly to bed aboard the doomed Lusitania and awakens on a magical South Pacific Island just as the passenger liner is torpedoed. In a future where women rule the world, a sentient island becomes murderously jealous of a shipwrecked couple. Dire consequences await a human swept into the dark, magical world of elves. A deadly labyrinth coils around the dark heart of a picturesque landscape garden. Within an Egyptian sarcophagus lies the horrifying price of infidelity. Swirling unseen around us are loathsome creatures giving form to our basest desires and fears. A beautiful, veiled medium may hold the key to preventing unspeakable evil from slipping through the borderlands between life and death. On a lost island a woman pipe player and her monstrous dancing partner bring death and terror to five adventurers. ø The stories in this collection have played an integral role in the development of modern dark fantasy, greatly influencing such writers as H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt.
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The Sleeper Awakes
by H. G. Wells
Annotation In The Sleeper Awakes, an insomniac falls into a sleep-like trance for more than two hundred years, and awakes in a society in which the oppressed masses cling desperately to one dream--that the sleeper will awake and lead them all to freedom.
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Tales of Wonder
by Mark Twain
"First published in 1984 as The science fiction of Mark Twain by Archon Books ... North Haven, CT"--T.p. verso.
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In the Days of the Comet
by Herbert George Wells
A comet rushes toward the earth, a deadly, glowing orb that soon fills the sky and promises doom. 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.øIn the Days of the Comet is H. G. Wells's classic tale of the last days of the old earth and the extraterrestrial Change that becomes the salvation of the human race. 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.
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Northwest of Earth
by Catherine Lucile Moore
75th Anniversary Edition! Among the best-written and most emotionally complex stories of the Pulp Era, the tales of intergalactic smuggler Northwest Smith still resonate strongly 75 years after their first publication. From the crumbling temples of forgotten gods on Venus to the seedy pleasure halls of old Mars, Northwest Smith blazes a trail through the underbelly of the solar system in 13 action-packed stories you won't soon forget.
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The Beetle
by Richard Marsh
The Beetle (1897) tells the story of a fantastical creature, “born of neither god nor man,” with supernatural and hypnotic powers, who stalks British politician Paul Lessingham through fin de siècle London in search of vengeance for the defilement of a sacred tomb in Egypt. In imitation of various popular fiction genres of the late nineteenth century, Marsh unfolds a tale of terror, late imperial fears, and the “return of the repressed,” through which the crisis of late imperial Englishness is revealed. This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a rich selection of historical documents that situate the novel within the contexts of fin de siècle London, England’s interest and involvement in Egypt, the emergence of the New Woman, and contemporary theories of mesmerism and animal magnetism.
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Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction
by Gary Westfahl
An examination of science fiction editor and author Hugo Gernsback's career, this critical study explores the many ways in which his work influenced the genre. It summarizes the science fiction theories of Gernsback and his successors, considers his efforts to define science fiction both verbally and visually, and for the first time offers detailed studies of his rarest periodicals, including Technocracy Review, Superworld Comics, and Science-Fiction Plus. An analysis of his ground-breaking novel, Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660, and its influences on a variety of science fiction novels, films and television programs is also offered.
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Mizora
by Mary E. Bradley Lane
Bison Frontiers of Imagination What would happen to our culture if men ceased to exist? Mary E. Bradley Lane explores this question in Mizora, the first known feminist utopian novel written by a woman. Vera Zarovitch is a Russian noblewoman -- heroic, outspoken, and determined. A political exile in Siberia, she escapes and flees north, eventually finding herself, adrift and exhausted, on a strange sea at the North Pole. Crossing a barrier of mist and brilliant light, Zarovitch is swept into the enchanted, inner world of Mizora. A haven of music, peace, universal education, and beneficial, advanced technology, Mizora is a world of women. Mizora appeared anonymously in the Cincinnati Commercial in 1880 and 1881. Mary E. Bradley Lane concealed from her husband her role in writing the controversial story. Introducing this Bison Frontiers of Imagination edition is Joan Saberhagen, coeditor of Pawn to Infinity and a member of the Very Small Array workshop, a group of science fiction writers in New Mexico.
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Invaders from the Infinite
by John Campbell
The alien spaceship was unthinkably huge, enormously powerful, apparently irresistible. It came from the void and settled on Earth, striking awe into the hearts of all who saw it. Its mission, however, was not conquest -- but a call for help! First contact was a job for the brilliant team of scientists, Arcot, Wade, and Morey. And what they received was an offer of an alliance against an invading foe so powerful that no known force could turn it back! John W. Campbell's INVADERS FROM THE INFINITE is a veritable odyssey of the universe, exploring world after world and uncovering cosmic secret after cosmic secret. Here is a classic novel of super-science that may never be surpassed!
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Interplanetary Odysseys
by Stanley G Weinbaum
INTERPLANETARY ODYSSEYS .."...One of the novas of the SF cosmos." The New Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction Interplanetary Odysseys collects together all of Stanley G. Weinbaum's tales set on the planets and moons of our own solar system. With their colony cities and fast, easy space travel, these stories from the great romantic tradition of SF remain entertaining, readable and relevant. Weinbaum was noted as the first SF writer to create believable aliens that were a product of their own planetary environments and eco-systems. The lead story, the classic "A Martian Odyssey," demonstrates this talent perfectly and with the nine other tales included here it gives readers new and old a chance to relive the sense of wonder that sprang from the glory days of science fiction.