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There's a heavy price to pay for the manipulation of nature in this novel from the revered author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. It begins as a boon for mankind-the creation of the substance Herakleophorbia IV. When fed to farm animals, it causes them to grow to enormous size. But when it is accidentally allowed to enter the local food chain, the consequences prove monstrous: Human children exposed to it grow into giants, reaching...
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"When penniless businessman Mr. Bedford retreats to the Kent coast to write a play, he meets by chance the brilliant Dr. Cavor, an absent-minded scientist on the brink of developing a material that blocks gravity. Cavor soon succeeds in his experiments, only to tell a stunned Bedford the invention makes possible one of the oldest dreams of humanity: a journey to the moon. With Bedford motivated by money and Cavor by the desire for knowledge, the two...
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When a diplomat dies in the 1930s, he leaves behind a book of 'dream visions' he has been experiencing, detailing events that will occur on Earth for the next two hundred years. This fictional 'account of the future' (similar to LAST AND FIRST MEN by Olaf Stapledon) proved prescient in many ways, as Wells predicts events such as the Second World War, the rise of chemical warfare and climate change.
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Malachi Constant, "the richest man in America, " gives up his indulgent lifestyle to follow an urgent calling to probe the depths of space. He participates in a Martian invasion of Earth, mates with the wife of an astronaut adrift on the tides of time, and follows the lure of the "Sirens of Titan."
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Three thousand years after Earth's colonisation of the planet Borthan, stories of self-serving hypocrisy that occurred among the first arrivals have bred a culture that forbids emotional sharing and denies the naturally human concept of 'self'. The result is a lasting peace, but at a terrible price. For it is a peace without love, without self, where even the mention of the word 'I' is taboo. Spurred on by the arrival of an Earthman with a self-baring...
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Gully Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class, is the only survivor on his drifting, wrecked spaceship. When another space vessel, the Vorga, ignores his distress flares and sails by, Foyle becomes a man obsessed with revenge. He endures 170 days alone in deep space before finding refuge on the Sargasso Asteroid and then returning to Earth to track down the crew and owners of the Vorga. But, as he works out his murderous grudge, Foyle also uncovers a secret...
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The story of an isolated post-holocaust community in the Appalachians determined to preserve itself through a perilous experiment in cloning. Sweeping, dramatic, rich with humanity, and rigorous in its science, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is widely regarded as a high point of both humanistic and hard science fiction. It won both the Hugo Award and Locus Award on its first publication and is as compelling today as it was then.
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Written in 1896, The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of the earliest scientific romances. An instant sensation, it was meant as a commentary on Darwin's theory of evolution, which H. G. Wells stoutly believed. The story centers on the depraved Dr. Moreau, who conducts unspeakable animal experiments on a remote tropical island, with hideous, humanlike results. Edward Prendick, an English-man whose misfortunes bring him to the island, is witness to the...
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SF masterworks volume 34
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In this, which many consider this to be Clarke's best novel, Vannevar Morgan is the greatest civil engineer of the mid-22nd century. Having built a bridge across the Straits of Gibraltar, he dreams of an even greater accomplishment, a bridge to space: a "skyhook," or "space elevator." This will be a cable stretching from the Earth's equator to an anchoring satellite in geosynchronous orbit. First Morgan must deal with the monks who own the ideal real...
11) Jem
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The discovery of another habitable world might spell salvation to the three bitterly competing power blocs of the resource-starved 21st century; but when their representatives arrive on Jem, with its multiple intelligent species, they discover instead the perfect situation into which to export their rivalries.
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Set in an immense world teeming with alien races and fantastic, almost magical, machinery, Valentine, an itinerant juggler, wakes up one morning with only a vague and troubled idea of who he is. He gradually discovers, through dreams and portents, that he is in fact his namesake: Lord Valentine, the Coronal, his body and throne stolen by a usurper. Across the giant world of Majipoor, Valentine sets out on a quest to win back his throne - and discover...
13) Riddley Walker
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Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state--and invented a language to represent it.
14) Blood music
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Experimenting with biochips, Vergil Ulam creates instead a microscopic intelligence that mutates. Vergil injects himself with the disease culture to smuggle it out of the country. That is how the end of the world begins.
15) Emphyrio
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SF masterworks volume no. 19
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Far in the future, the craftsmen of the distant planet Halma create goods which are the wonder of the galaxy. But they know little of this. Their society is harshly regimented, its religion austere and unforgiving, and primitive - to maintain standards, even the most basic use of automation is punishable by death. When Amiante, a wood-carver, is executed for processing old documents with a camera, his son Ghyl rebels, and decides to bring down the...
16) Non-stop
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SF masterworks volume 33
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Curiosity was discouraged in the Greene tribe. Its members lived out their lives in cramped Quarters, hacking away at the encroaching ponics. As to where they were - that was forgotten. Roy Complain decides to find out. With the renegade priest Marapper, he moves into unmapped territory, where they make a series of discoveries which turn their universe upside-down... Non-Stop is the classic SF novel of discovery and exploration; a brilliant evocation...
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SF masterworks volume 42
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""One of the most ingenious parallel world stories ever written." -- Richard A. Lupoff. In this acclaimed work of alternate history, the South claims victory after defeating the Union army at the Battle of Gettysburg. In the mid-20th century, people now live under the constant threat of war between the Confederacy and its bitter rival, the German Union. Can a young scholar travel back in time to reset the path and save the future?"--
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When Becky Driscoll turns up at Dr Miles Bennell's consulting room after hours one August evening and tells him that her cousin Wilma doesn't think that her Uncle Ira is really her Uncle Ira, it is just the beginning of a nightmare. As the number of similar stories multiplies, Miles discovers the horrific truth.
20) Mockingbird
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SF masterworks volume 70
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In a dying world where humans are drugged and lulled by electronic bliss, where there are no children, where some would rather burn themselves alive than endure, Spofforth is the most perfect machine ever created. But his only desire is cease to be. Yet there is hope in the passion and joy that a man and a woman discover in love and in books, hope for the future, hope even for Spofforth.
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