Science Fiction Classics |
Great science fiction novels, essential reading for the SF fan
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
`Obeying an alienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.` The Sun is about to go Nova. Earth and Moon have ceased their axial rotation and present one face continuously to the sun. This is the Age of Vegetables. The bright side of Earth is covered with one vast Banyan tree, in which live the last remnants of mankind. In humanity`s last great adventure Gren and his companions, not to mention the tummybelly men, journey to the even more terrifying dark side. One of Aldiss` most famous and long-enduring novels, fast moving, and packed with brilliant imagery.
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Gully Foyle, Mechanic`s Mate 3rd Class. Education, none, skills, none, merits, none, recommendations, none. That`s the official verdict on Gully Foyle, unskilled space crewman. But right now he is the only survivor on his drifting, wrecked spaceship, and when another space vessel, the Vorga, ignores his distress flares and sails by, Gully becomes obsessed with revenge. He endures 170 days alone in deep space before finding refuge on the Sargasso Asteroid and returning to Earth to track down the crew and owners of the Vorga. But, as he works out his murderous grudge, Gully Foyle also uncovers a secret of momentous proportions. One of the very best must-read SF novels of all time.
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Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith, the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it and with it their own destruction. `Consider Phlebas`, published in 1987, is a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination, and the first SF novel by one of Britain`s great SF writers.
Dune by Frank Herbert
`Dune` is one of the most brilliant science fiction novels ever written, as engrossing and heart-rending today as it was when it was first published half a century ago. Although it is almost completely without water, Arrakis, or Dune, is a planet of fabulous wealth, for it is the only source of a drug prized throughout the Galactic Empire. When Duke Atreides and his family take up court there they fall into a trap set by his rival. The Duke and his son, Paul, are expecting treachery and it duly comes, but from a shockingly unexpected place. Paul succeeds his father and he becomes a catalyst for the native people of Dune, whose knowledge of the ecology of the planet gives them vast power. They have been waiting for a leader like Paul Atreides, a leader who can harness that force.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
It is the 29th century and the universe of the Human Hegemony is under threat. Invasion by the warlike Ousters looms, and the mysterious schemes of the secessionist AI TechnoCore bring chaos ever closer. On the eve of disaster, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set fourth on a final voyage to the legendary Time Tombs on Hyperion, home to the Shrike, a lethal creature part god and part killing machine, whose powers transcend the limits of time and space. The pilgrims have resolved to die before discovering anything less than the secrets of the universe itself.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick
Popularly known as Blade Runner, because of its incarnation as a movie, `Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?` is Dick`s most famous title. Stalking androids in 21st century megalopolis, Rick Deckard begins to question just who is human and what human is. When he isn`t retiring the renegade replicants who are his prey, he dreams of owning a live animal, the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life. Then Rick gets his chance, the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets for a huge reward. But in Deckard`s world things are never that simple and his assignment quickly turns into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit, and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted.
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The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe`s `The Book of the New Sun` is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wondrous ways, in a time when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, the central character, is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims and journeying to the distant city of Thrax armed with his ancient executioner`s sword, Terminus Est. This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, `The Shadow of the Torturer` and `The Claw of the Conciliator`.
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Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone`s jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius. But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental transformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.
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Childhood`s End by Arthur C Clarke
When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. Although the Overlords kept themselves hidden from man, they had come to unite a warring world and to offer an end to poverty and crime. When they finally showed themselves it was a shock but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began. But the children of this utopia dream strange dreams of distant suns and alien planets, and begin to evolve into something incomprehensible to their parents, and soon they will be ready to join the Overmind and, in a grand and thrilling metaphysical climax, leave the Earth behind.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Private William Mandella is a reluctant hero in an interstellar war against an unknowable and unconquerable alien enemy, but his greatest test will be when he returns home. Relativity means that for every few months` tour of duty centuries have passed on Earth, isolating the combatants ever more from the world for whose future they are fighting. Haldeman drew on his own experiences in Vietnam to create this brilliant novel about the dislocation and alienation of war.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy, dissatisfied, and there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic and escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books. The classic novel of a post-literate future, `Fahrenheit 451` stands alongside Orwell`s `1984` and Huxley`s `Brave New World` as a prophetic account of Western civilization`s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradbury`s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Prisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveller, these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this miraculously moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with apocalypse. `Slaughterhouse 5` is one of the world`s great anti-war books. Centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim`s odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
The War of the Worlds by H G Wells
The first modern tale of alien invasion, H.G. Wells`s `The War of the Worlds` remains one of the most influential science fiction novels ever published. 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, naive locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag, only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray as the invaders emerge from the crater. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as the Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the 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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The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
When a freak cosmic event renders most of the Earth`s population blind, Bill Masen is one of the lucky few to retain his sight. The London he walks is crammed with groups of men and women needing help, some ready to prey on those who can still see, but another menace stalks blind and sighted alike. With nobody to stop their spread the Triffids, mobile plants with lethal stingers and carnivorous appetites, seem set to take control. `The Day of the Triffids` is perhaps the most famous catastrophe novel of the twentieth century and its startling imagery of desolate streets and lurching, lethal plant life retains its power to haunt today.
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Page last updated: 10/12/12