Scientifiction/Scientific Romances
Explore the best Scientifiction and Scientific Romances books—classic tales blending science and romance. Discover top picks for fans of speculative fiction and vintage sci-fi love stories.
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Selected Stories of H. G. Wells
by H. G. Wells
Ursula K. Le Guin’s selection of twenty-six stories showcases H. G. Wells’s genius and reintroduces readers to his singular talent for making the unbelievable seem utterly plausible. He envisioned a sky filled with airplanes before Orville Wright ever left the ground. He described the spectacle of space travel decades before men set foot on the moon. H. G. Wells was a visionary, a man of science with an enduring literary touch, and his originality and inventiveness are fully on display in this essential collection. “Wells imagined both dark and bright futures because his creed allowed both while promising neither, and because the eighty years of his life were years of immense intellectual and technological accomplishment and appalling violence and destruction.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, from the introduction “Everything one imagines in the way of genius and fun.”—Rebecca West Including these stories: “A Slip Under the Microscope” “The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes” “The Plattner Story” “Under the Knife” “The Crystal Egg” “The New Accelerator” “The Stolen Body” “The Argonauts of the Air” “In the Abyss” “The Star” “The Land Ironclads” “A Dream of Armageddon” “The Lord of the Dynamos” “The Valley of Spiders” “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham” “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” “The Magic Shop” “Mr. Skelmersdale in Fairyland” “The Door in the Wall” “The Presence by the Fire” “A Vision of Judgment” “The Story of the Last Trump” “The Wild Asses of the Devil” “Answer to Prayer” “The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper” “The Country of the Blind”
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The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells
When the intrepid Time Traveller finds himself in the year 802,701, he encounters a seemingly utopian society of evolved human beings but then unearths the dark secret that sets mankind on course toward its inevitable destruction. An insightful look into a distant, bleak, and disturbing future, The Time Machine goes beyond the reaches of science fiction to provide a strikingly relevant discussion of social progress, class struggle, and the human condition. Hailed as a masterpiece of its genre, H. G. Wells’s famous novella about the perils of history and the hubris of modernity comes vividly alive in this remarkable reissue of a unique 1931 illustrated edition.
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The Time Machine
by H. G. Wells
Wells's genre-defining novel of time travel When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year a.d. 802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realizes that these beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture—now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity—the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist’s time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels if he is ever to return to his own era. This edition includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on Wells, a list of further reading, and detailed notes. Marina Warner’s introduction considers Wells’s development of the “scientific romance” and places the novel in the context of its time. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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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 War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
The Night After A Shooting Star Is Seen Streaking Through The Sky From Mars, A Cylinder Is Discovered On Horsell Common In London. At First, Naïve Locals Approach The Cylinder Armed Just With A White Flag Only To Be Quickly Killed By An All-Destroying Heat-Ray, As Terrifying Tentacled Invaders Emerge. Soon The Whole Of Human Civilisation Is Under Threat, As Powerful Martians Build Gigantic Killing Machines, Destroy All In Their Path With Black Gas And Burning Rays, And Feast On The Warm Blood Of Trapped, Still-Living Human Prey. The Forces Of The Earth, However, May Prove Harder To Beat Than They At First Appear.
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ID: 0812970004
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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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ID: 081296831X
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The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
One of the greatest of all horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) also composed pioneering tales that seized upon the scientific developments of an era marked by staggering change. In this collection of sixteen stories, he explores such wide-ranging contemporary themes as galvanism, time travel and resurrection of the dead. 'The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall' relates a man's balloon journey to the moon with a combination of scientific precision and astonishing fantasy. Elsewhere, the boundaries between horror and science are elegantly blurred in stories such as 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar', while the great essay 'Eureka' outlines Poe's own interpretation of the universe. Powerfully influential on later authors including Jules Verne, these works are essential reading for anyone wishing to trace the genealogy of science fiction, or to understand the complexity of Poe's own creative vision. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Journey to the Centre of the Earth
by Jules Verne
The intrepid Professor Lindenbrock embarks upon the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century: a journey down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the Earth’s very core. In his quest to penetrate the planet’s primordial secrets, the geologist—together with his quaking nephew Axel and their devoted guide, Hans—discovers an astonishing subterranean menagerie of prehistoric proportions. Verne’s imaginative tale is at once the ultimate science fiction adventure and a reflection on the perfectibility of human understanding and the psychology of the questor. As David Brin notes in his Introduction, though Verne never knew the term “science fiction,” Journey to the Centre of the Earth is “inarguably one of the wellsprings from which it all began.”
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ID: 0812968565
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Around the World in Eighty Days
by Jules Verne
Verne's classic novel of global voyaging One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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ID: 0192828398
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The Mighty Orinoco
by Jules Verne
Written in 1898, and part of Jules Verne's famous series "Voyages Extraordinaires, " this fantastic tale a young man's search for his father along Venezuela's then-uncharted Orinoco River contains all the ingredients of a classic Verne scientific-adventure storyQas well as a unique feminist twist.
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ID: 0812966422
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ID: 0140437657
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The Lost World
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Ed Malone is persuaded to join the larger-than-life Professor George Edward Challenger on a scientific expedition in the depths of the Amazon. But as the expedition team plunges deeper into the forest, the danger mounts. Now it is up to Ed and the Professor to get out alive.
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