David Selig was born with an awesome power — the ability to look deep into the human heart, to probe the darkest truths hidden in the secret recesses of the soul. With reckless abandon, he used his talent in the pursuit of pleasure. Then, one day, his power began to die…
Universally acclaimed as Robert Silverberg’s masterwork, Dying Inside is a vivid, harrowing portrait of a man who squandered a remarkable gift, of a superman who had to learn what it was to be human.
The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim.
The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.
The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by Publishers Weekly, and "one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century" by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Shadow & Claw brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume.
In this genre-bending novel—among the first to have launched sci-fi into the arena of literature—one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul.
There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and Gerry, who has everything it takes to run the world except for a conscience. Separately, they are talented freaks. Together, they compose a single organism that may represent the next step in evolution, and the final chapter in the history of the human race.
As the protagonists of More Than Human struggle to find out who they are and whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it, Theodore Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging, with suspense, pathos, and a lyricism rarely seen in science fiction.
Nebula Award Reality has come unglued and a mad civilization takes root in Bellona, in this science fiction classic.
A young half–Native American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellona—only something is wrong there . . . In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-sharp knives, to write, to love, to wound.
So begins Dhalgren , Samuel R. Delany’s masterwork, which in 1975 opened a new door for what science fiction could mean. A labyrinth of a novel, it raises questions about race, sexuality, identity, and art, but gives no easy answers, in a city that reshapes itself with each step you take . . .
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.
In 1941, Astounding Science Fiction magazine published a short story by a little-known writer named Isaac Asimov. The story was called "Nightfall", and many years later it has long been recognized as a classic, its author a legend. Now, the Grand Master of Science Fiction teams with Robert Silverberg, one of the field's top award-winning authors, to explore and expand an apocalyptic tale that is more spellbinding today than ever before -- Nightfall: The Novel.
Imagine living on a planet with six suns that never experiences darkness. Imagine never having seen the stars. Then, one by one the suns start to set, gradually leading into darkness for the first time ever. Kalgash is a world on the edge of chaos, torn between the madness of religious fanaticism and the unyielding rationalism of scientists. Lurking beneath it all is a collective, instinctual fear of the Darkness. For Kalgash knows only the perpetual light of day; to its inhabitants, a gathering twilight portends unspeakable horror. And only a handful of people on the planet are prepared to face the truth, their six suns are setting all at once for the first time in over two thousand years, signaling the end of civilization as it explodes in the awesome splendor of Nightfall.
Encompassing the psychology of disaster, the tenacity of the human spirit, and, ultimately, the regenerative power of hope, Nightfall is a tale rich in character and suspense that only the unique collaboration of Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg could create.
Beneath the dying sun the disgraced torturer, Severian, at last comes to his place of exile - Thrax, the City of Windowless Rooms. But Severian's journeying is not ended, and high in the Earth's ancient mountains he draws closer to his destiny.
Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home is a major work of the imagination from one of America's most respected writers. More than five years in creation, it is a novel unlike any other.
A rich and complex interweaving of story and fable, poem, artwork, and music, it totally immerses the reader in the culture of the Kesh, a peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place called the Valley on the Northern Pacific Coast. The author makes the inhabitants of the valley as familiar, as immediate, as wholly human as our own friends or family.
Spiraling outward from the dramatic life story of a woman called Stone Telling, Le Guin's Always Coming Home interweaves wry wit, deep insight and extraordinary compassion into a compelling unity of vision.
Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time, after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, 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 four volumes of the series.
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, John Varley is truly one of the "greats" of science fiction, comparable only to Heinlein, Herbert, Asimov, and Clark. Now the all-time master returns -- with his long-awaited epic novel of life beyond the great beyond...All the universe is a stage, and Sparky Valentine is its itinerant thespian. He makes his way from planet to planet as part of a motley theater troupe, bringing Shakespeare -- a version of it anyway -- to the outer reaches of earth's solar system. He journeys through the outlands, where thousands of artificial satellites drift, conglomerates of junk and rock welded together to support meager communities of human life. Here Sparky plies his trade, transforming himself from young to old, fat to thin, man to woman, by altering magnetic implants beneath his skin. Indispensable hardware for a career actor and an interstellar con man wanted for murder -- for while Sparky Valentine may have a song in his heart, he also has a price on his head. But his galactic roamings are bringing him closer to home, closer to justice -- and closer to the truth of his strange and prolonged existence...
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