Science Fiction

One of Time’s 100 best English-language novels • A mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous, you’ll recognize it immediately

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse.

Praise for Snow Crash

“[Snow Crash is] a cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. This is no mere hyperbole.”—The San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the twenty-first century.”—William Gibson

“Brilliantly realized . . . Stephenson turns out to be an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow.”—The New York Times Book Review

Buy Snow Crash: A Novel by Neal Stephenson Here

Twenty years ago, the Gaean Trilogy dazzled critics and readers. Now a new generation will discover that brilliant world–beginning with Titan.

Buy Titan (Gaia Book 1) by John Varley Here

From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life.

Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and there is no telling where it will end.

Buy The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton Here

In all the universe, no species reached for the stars without “uplift” guidance, except possibly humankind. Did some cryptic patron race begin the job long ago, then abandon us? Or did we leap all by ourselves? That question burns, yet a greater mystery looms ahead, in the furnace of a star. Under the caverns of Mercury, Expedition Sundiver prepares for the most momentous voyage in our history – into the boiling inferno of the sun, seeking our destiny in the cosmic order of life.
David Brin’s Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written, comprising one of the most beloved sagas of all time. This freshly revised re-issue includes a substantial author’s introduction about the personal and scientific journeys leading to his now-classic first novel.

Sundiver is the first book in David Brin’s magnificent Uplift series, including also:
Startide Rising
The Uplift War
Brightness Reef
Infinity’s Shore
Heaven’s Reach

Buy Sundiver by David Brin Here

Recipient of the Sturgeon Award, Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and the environmental journal High Country News. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated into numerous western newspapers.

Buy The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi Here

Ancillary Justice is Ann Leckie’s stunning debut — the only novel to ever win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards — about a ship’s AI who becomes trapped in a human body and her quest for revenge. A must read for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and James S. A. Corey.

“There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can. There are few who ever could.” — John Scalzi
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest.

Once, she was the Justice of Toren — a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.

Now, an act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with one fragile human body, unanswered questions, and a burning desire for vengeance.

Buy Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch Book 1) by Ann Leckie Here

This beautifully illustrated edition of the New York Times bestselling classic celebrates the 42nd anniversary of the original publication—with all-new art by award-winning illustrator Chris Riddell.

SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • “An astonishing comic writer.”—Neil Gaiman

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien.

After that, things get much, much worse.

With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.

Douglas Adams’s mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .

Buy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Illustrated Edition by Douglas Adams Here

Nebula Award Nominee
A saga of a young man’s odyssey of self-discovery on an eerily alien Earth thirteen centuries in the future.

Rich in detail and filled with beings brought to life with intense energy, this strange and beautiful world reveals its secrets as Sumner Kagan changes from an adolescent outcast to a warrior with god-like powers. In the process, we accompany Sumner on an epic and transcendent journey.

Buy Radix (The Radix Tetrad Book 1) by A. A. Attanasio Here

In the Retro Hugo Award–nominated novel that inspired the Syfy miniseries, alien invaders bring peace to Earth—at a grave price: “A first-rate tour de force” (The New York Times).

In the near future, enormous silver spaceships appear without warning over mankind’s largest cities. They belong to the Overlords, an alien race far superior to humanity in technological development. Their purpose is to dominate Earth. Their demands, however, are surprisingly benevolent: end war, poverty, and cruelty. Their presence, rather than signaling the end of humanity, ushers in a golden age . . . or so it seems.

Without conflict, human culture and progress stagnate. As the years pass, it becomes clear that the Overlords have a hidden agenda for the evolution of the human race that may not be as benevolent as it seems.

“Frighteningly logical, believable, and grimly prophetic . . . Clarke is a master.” —Los Angeles Times

Buy Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke Here

Astronauts explore an alien spacecraft hurtling toward the sun in this Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novel—“a stone-cold classic” of hard sci-fi (The Guardian).

An enormous cylindrical object has entered Earth’s solar system on a collision course with the sun. A team of astronauts are sent to explore the mysterious craft, which the denizens of the solar system name Rama. What they find is astonishing evidence of a civilization far more advanced than ours. They find an interior stretching over fifty kilometers; a forbidding cylindrical sea; mysterious and inaccessible buildings; and strange machine-animal hybrids, or “biots,” that inhabit the ship. But what they don’t find is an alien presence. So who—and where—are the Ramans?

Often listed as one of Clarke’s finest novels, Rendezvous with Rama won numerous awards, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Jupiter, and the British Science Fiction Awards. A fast-paced and compelling story of an enigmatic encounter with alien technology, Rendezvous with Rama offers both answers and unsolved mysteries that will continue to fascinate readers for generations.

Buy Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke Here

The classic science fiction novel that captures and expands on the vision of Stanley Kubrick’s immortal film—and changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves.

From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man ventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.

This allegory about humanity’s exploration of the universe—and the universe’s reaction to humanity—is a hallmark achievement in storytelling that follows the crew of the spacecraft Discovery as they embark on a mission to Saturn. Their vessel is controlled by HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent supercomputer capable of the highest level of cognitive functioning that rivals—and perhaps threatens—the human mind.

Grappling with space exploration, the perils of technology, and the limits of human power, 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to be an enduring classic of cinematic scope.

Buy 2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey Series) by Arthur C. Clarke Here

Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend

Jasper Fforde’s beloved New York Times bestselling novel introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of The Constant Rabbit

Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde’s Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë’s novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde’s ingenious fantasy—enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel—unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.

Buy The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde Here

The Stars My Destination is a science fiction novel by American writer Alfred Bester. Set in the 24th or 25th century, which varies between editions of the book, when humans have colonized the Solar System, it tells the story of Gully [Gulliver] Foyle, a teleporter driven by a burning desire for revenge.

Buy The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester Here

This bold exploration of the cosmos ventures into intelligent star clusters and mingles among alien races for a memorable vision of infinity. Cited as a key influence by science-fiction masters such as Doris Lessing, this classic has left its mark not only in modern literature but also in the fields of social anthropology and philosophy.

Buy Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon Here

This novel explores the theme of the superman in the character of John Wainwright, whose super-normal human mentality inevitably leads to conflict with normal human society and threatens the destruction of the utopian colony founded by John and other superhumans.

Buy Odd John by Olaf Stapledon Here