Search Worlds Without End

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 of a familiar setting seen through the eyes of a primitive.

The Penultimate Truth

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 8

Philip K. Dick

What if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie? That's the question at the heart of Philip K. Dick's futuristic novel about political oppression, the show business of politics and the sinister potential of the military industrial complex. This wry, paranoid thriller imagines a future in which the earth has been ravaged, and cities are burnt-out wastelands too dangerous for human life. Americans have been shipped underground, where they toil in crowded industrial ant hills and receive a steady diet of inspiring speeches from a President who never seems to age. Nick St. James, like the rest of the masses, believed in the words of his leaders. But that all changes when he travels to the surface - where what he finds is more shocking than anything he could possibly imagine.

Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utlizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.

The Walking Shadow

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 9

Brian Stableford

Where Paul Heisenberg had stood there was now a silver statue, dressed in the same white tunic, but reflecting from the surface that had, once been bare flesh all the light which had been carefully directed to compose the glowing nimbus.

The glow was even brighter now, and in the stillness which followed the interruption of the beautiful voice, there was a profundity which seemed terrible ...'

In front of 80,000 people Heisenberg, the new Messiah, the darling of the media, had gone into a trance of immeasurable depth. His body had gone into limbo, awaiting some future awakening, and it wasn't long before others had similarly gone into stasis and followed him.

Soon there were thousands fleeing through the aeons, congregating at meeting points hundreds of years ahead and then leaping off ever further into the future until finally they reached the very end of time.

But then where would they go? And where were the people they'd left behind?

The Zap Gun

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 10

Philip K. Dick

In this biting satire, the Cold War may have ended, but the eastern and western governments never told their citizens. Instead they created an elaborate ruse, wherein each side comes up with increasingly outlandish doomsday weapons-weapons that don't work. But when aliens invade, the top designers of both sides have to come together to make a real doomsday device-if they don't kill each other first.

With its combination of romance, espionage, and alien invasion, The Zap Gun skewers the military-industrial complex in a way that's as relevant today as it was at the height of the Cold War.

Hello America

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 11

J. G. Ballard

A terrifying vision of the future from one of our most renowned writers - J G Ballard, author of 'Empire of the Sun' and 'Crash'.

Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth-century America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the deserted continent. But America is unrecognisable - the Bering Strait has been dammed and the whole continent has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-continent journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks. They will uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas in this unique vision of our world transformed.

Beyond Apollo

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 12

Barry N. Malzberg

A two-man mission to Venus fails and is aborted. When it returns, the Captain is missing and the other astronaut, Harry M. Evans, is unable to explain what has happened. Or, conversely, he has too many explications. His journal of the expedition -- compiled in the mental institution to which NASA has embarrassedly committed him -- offers contradictory stories: he murdered the Captain, mad Venusian invaders murdered the Captain, the Captain vanished, no one was murdered and the Captain has returned in Evans' guise....

As the explanations pyramid and as the supervising psychiatrist's increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story fail, it becomes apparent that Evans's madness and his inability to explain what happened are expressions of humanity's incompetence at the enormity of space exploration.

The Embedding

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 13

Ian Watson

Ian Watson's brilliant debut novel was one of the most significant publications in British SF in the 1970s. Intellectually bracing and grippingly written, it is the story of three experiments in linguistics, and is driven by a searching analysis of the nature of communication. Fiercely intelligent, energetic and challenging, it immediately established Watson as a writer of rare power and vision, and is now recognized as a modern classic.

The Müller-Fokker Effect

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 14

John Sladek

Bob Shairp--a writer and dreamer--has agreed to be a guinea-pig in a military experiment to find out if his personality can be turned into data and stored on computer. But a computing error quickly destroys Shairp's physical body, leaving his mind stranded in an encoded world. Can the process be reversed?

Miracle Visitors

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 15

Ian Watson

An unusually brilliant and mind-stretching metaphysical quest from one of the most exciting talents in science fiction.

John Deacon uses hypnosis to help his patients reach altered states of consciousness. One of his subjects, Michael Peacocke, is unusually susceptible and in their first session together, Michael recalls a "close encounter"--in both senses of the term--with an alien. Deacon, skeptical of the story, dismisses it as an adolescent sexual fantasy. But then strange things begin to happen and Deacon is forced to reconsider. Could UFOs be symbols projected from the collective unconscious? Are they messages from the biomatrix? Does the mind have the ability to project objects and people that are physically real...yet somehow illusory?

A wonderfully fascinating, mind-bending voyage.

Last Orders

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 16

A careful selection of what the author considered was his most telling short work from the mid-Seventies.

Table of Contents:

Author's Note - (1977) - essay by Brian W. Aldiss
Last Orders - (1976)
Creatures of Apogee - (1977)
Within the Black Circle - (1975)
Killing Off the Big Animals - (1975)
What Are You Doing? Why Are You Doing It? - (1975)
Enigma 2: Diagrams For Three Stories - (1974) - essay by Brian W. Aldiss
The Girl in the Tau-Dream - (1974)
The Immobility Crew - (1974)
A Cultural Side-Effect - (1974)
Live? Our Computers Will Do That for Us - (1974)
The Monsters of Ingratitude IV - (1974)
Waiting for the Universe to Begin - (1975)
But Without Orifices - (1975)
Aimez-Vous Holman Hunt? - (1975)
Backwater - (1977)
The Eternal Theme of Exile - (1973)
All Those Enduring Old Charms - (1973)
Nobody Spoke Or Waved Goodbye - (1973)
The Expensive Delicate Ship - (1973)
Carefully Observed Women - (1975)
The Daffodil Returns the Smile - (1975)
The Year of the Quiet Computer - (1975)
Appearance of Life - (1976)
Wired for Sound - (1974)
Journey to the Heartland - (1976)

The Forgotten Planet

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 17

Murray Leinster

The story of an experiment gone wrong--a planet seeded with primitive bacterial, plant, and insect life forms, then forgotten until a spaceship crash-lands, stranding its crew. The crew must fight to survive in a savage nightmare world. From the Hugo Award-winning author, Murray Leinster.

Cosmic Encounter

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 18

A space vehicle from Earth's distant future is trapped in the 18th Century, lands in the Caribbean Sea, and it's crew boards the pirate ship Orinda. The unwitting pirate, Captain Fletcher, must cope with the uncanny problems posed by time-displacement, an alien "cabin boy," captives sentenced to walk the plank who drown but do not die, and an ominous battleship that had sneaked in from a differnt point in the galaxy.

How the "cabin boy" struggles to restore his ship, flight off the enemy battleship, and prevent Earth's history from being irrevocably changed, makes for a wonderful adventure that blends futuistic time-travel with the swashbuckling excitement of 18th-Century pirates.

The Moon is Hell!

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 19

John W. Campbell, Jr.

Contents:

9 - The Moon Is Hell! - novel by John W. Campbell, Jr.
147 - The Elder Gods - (1973) - novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. and Arthur J. Burks

The Dark Light Years

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 20

What would intelligent life-forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement?

Upon first contact with the Utod -- intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain -- mankind instantly views these aliens as animals because of their unhygienic customs. This leads to the slaughter, capture and dissection of the Utod. But when one explorer recognizes the intelligence behind their habits, he must reevaluate what it actually means to be "intelligent."

With a New Introduction from the Author!

Chekhov's Journey

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 21

Ian Watson

In 1890 the Russian author Chekhov undertook an historic journey across Siberia to the convict island of Sakhalin. A hundred years later, in an isolated artist's retreat, a Soviet film unit prepares to commemorate his journey by using a technique that will cause their chosen actor to not only play the role of the playwright, but to believe that he is Chekhov. But the situations Mikhail acts out diverge wildly from known biographical facts when Chekhov hears of an explosion in the Tunguska region of Siberia. Yet the real Tunguska explosion occurred in 1908 - so how could Chekhov have possible heard of it in 1890?

The Book of Ptath

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 23

The god Ptath is flung into the far future by a deadly rival and given the mind of a 20th century man. Stranded in this alien world, he must fight to regain his powers before the rival goddess sends the world spinning into chaos and darkness.

The Night Mayor

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 24

Kim Newman

Truro Daine, a dangerous criminal who has been confined to imprisonment, escapes his incarceration by inventing a computer-generated dream world, which he rules as the Night Mayor.

This first novel is a highly entertaining and imaginative journey between fact, fiction, and fantasy in the depths of a city where it is always two-thirty in the morning and always raining. "The conventions of film noir are lovingly exploited in this entertaining novel".--New York Times Book Review.

The Universe Maker

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 25

Originally appeared in Ace Double D-31 (1953).

Did you ever hear of the Inter-Time Society for Psychological Adjustments? Well, neither had Morton Cargill in 1953 when he accidentally killed a girl. A year later that very girl turned up, apparently alive, and announced that the mysterious society had condemned him to death! Cargill's astounding adventures began when he escaped the execution chamber to find himself in the far future. Three conflicting societies were hunting for him, to use him in their own desperate schemes. There were the Floaters, a nation of aerial vagabonds. There were the Tweeners, who dreamed of world conquest. And finally, interwoven through everything, were the sinister figures of the Shadow Men-supermen without visible substance.

The Forever Machine

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 26

Frank Riley
Mark Clifton

The government ordered it built: a thinking machine that could foresee catastrophe and eliminate human error. Research trainee Joe Carter sees another possibility--create a machine that will make ordinary people telepathic--and immortal.

This Galaxy Novel is available for free on the Internet Archives.

Quarantine World

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 27

Murray Leinster

A classic adventure from a Sci-Fi Hall-of-Famer. The only connecting links between the galaxy's countless colonized new worlds are the Med ships--lone starships each carrying one man and one beast. Roving the uncharted vastness of deep space, Calhoun and his tormal are one such pair, and at each planetfall, they fight not only plagues and epidemics, but humans bent on death and destruction.

Contents:

3 - The Mutant Weapon - [Med Service - 2] - (1959) - novel
101 - Plague on Kryder II - [Med Service] - (1964) - novella
155 - Ribbon in the Sky - [Med Service] - (1957) - novelette
203 - Quarantine World - [Med Service] - (1966) - novella

Ring Around the Sun

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 28

This novel is set in a future world where the equipment of ordinary, everyday life has become indestructible; there are everlasting lightbulbs and infallible cars, but no-one knows where they have come from.

More Than Human

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 29

Theodore Sturgeon

First published in 1953, this most celebrated of Sturgeon's works won the International Fantasy Award, as has been touted as "a masterpiece of provocative storytelling" (The Herald Tribune).

A group of remarkable social outcasts band together for survival and discover their combined powers renders them superhuman.

The Beast

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 30

The House That Stood Still

One of the finest writers in the golden age of science fiction--and inventor of the intricatley plotted form of SF known as the "space opera"--offers the story of a flawed hero possessing almost superhuman strength. When his wife is kidnapped, war veteran Jim Pendrake embarks upon a search that takes him to a lost colony on the moon--and a secret, sinister society.

Also published as Moonbeast.

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 31

A thrilling tale of a struggle to save Earth from Armageddon, written by one of the crucial authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Disaster is quickly approaching and the only ones who know of it are Allison Stephens and a group of ancient sinister aliens. Now the aliens plan to abandon Earth and seek a new home.

Also published as "The Mating Cry" and "The Undercover Aliens"

The Goblin Reservation

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 32

En route to an interplanetary research mission, a scientist is abducted by a strange, shadowy race of aliens and taken to a previously uncharted planet, a storehouse of information that would be invaluable--even to an Earth so advanced that time travel allows goblins, dinosaurs, even Shakespeare to coexist.

The Metal Monster

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 33

A. Merritt

Dr. Walter T. Goodwin is a botanist on an expedition to examine the varieties of a certain flower which grows in the Middle East. Starting from Tehran in Persia (Iran) Goodwin plans to wander through several countries until he comes to the Himalayas in Tibet. While in a valley in the Himalayas Goodwin comes upon Richard Drake, the son of an old friend who has recently died. Liking one another they decide to combine their expeditions and see where fate leads them. One evening they witness the light of the setting sun behaving oddly. Goodwin offers the explanation that it is the result of some unusual atmospheric effect, but Drake remarks that it almost seemed to be orchestrated by some intelligent force. That night the two hear strange noises, but do not see the source of the sound. The next day they come upon what seems to be a huge footprint from a creature of great weight. Later the same day the two explorers come upon Martin and Ruth Ventnor hiding in the ruins of a stone fortress. This brother and sister are trying to escape from soldiers who fantastically seem to be a throwback to time of Darius, complete with armor, swords and bows and arrows. The four flee from these ancient Persian worriers but are almost captured, when, appearing out of nowhere, an other-worldly woman and a shape-changing metal monster come to their aid. The soldiers are gruesomely annihilated. The strange woman's name is Norhala. Is Norhala the four's savior, or is she an even more dangerous enemy? Even more, what is the nature and secret of the metal monster?

The Mind Cage

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 34

David Marin risks his career to defend Wade Trask, a scientist being tried for sedition, but when Trask switches their brains, Marin finds himself branded an enemy of the state.

Cemetery World

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 35

Earth: expensive, elite graveyard to the galaxy. Ravaged 10,000 years earlier by war, Earth was reclaimed by its space-dwelling offspring as a planet of landscaping and tombstones. None of them fully human, Fletcher, Cynthia, and Elmer journey through this dead world, discovering human traits and undertaking a quest to rebuild a human world on Earth.

The Day of the Triffids

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 36

John Wyndham

In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having "all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare."

Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever.

But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.

The Great Explosion

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 37

Eric Frank Russell

In less than a century, 50 percent of the human race fled the aged and autocratic Terra, settling wherever they could establish a world of their own choosing. The following centuries result in hundreds of independent new civilizations--too independent for an ambitious Terran government out to conquer an empire.

All Flesh Is Grass

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 38

The strange but beautiful purple blossoms now grew wild in his backyard. One day Brad Carter tripped and fell into an alternate world, a world peopled by these very flowers.

Some of Your Blood

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 39

Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon's dark and foreboding look at the vampire myth was an instant classic when originally published in 1956. When George Smith is arrested for assaulting a senior officer, a military psychiatrist is assigned to the case. The secret of George's past is unearthed, and a history of blood lust and murder. Innovatively told through letters, interviews, and traditional narrative, Some of Your Blood effectively portrays the tragic upbringing of George Smith to his attempts at a stable life and the great love of his life to his inevitable downfall. Millipede Press is proud to present this masterpiece of macabre literature in a brand new edition.

The Werewolf Principle

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 40

Masters of Science Fiction: Fritz Leiber

After several years' absence and the loss of his memory, Andrew Blake returns to earth only to find himself accused of being a werewolf.

Masters of Science Fiction (Centipede Press): Book 1

Fritz Leiber

Poet, actor, playwright, chess expert, master of fantastic fiction. Fritz Leiber was a true Renaissance Man. His writing crossed all boundaries, from horror to sword and sorcery. This book goes deep into Leiber's underrated science fiction oeuvre. It's a comprehensive, page- turning cache that captures Leiber's thoroughly original style- - altogether mystical, beautiful, and sometimes disturbing.

"The Foxholes of Mars" is a literary assault: a frightening, nitro- fueled tale of war on Mars, with one soldier questioning the futility and purpose of the battle against bug- eyed aliens- - a distant mirror- image of our own times. "Space- Time for Springers" is told through the glaring eyes of Gummitch, a cat who happens to possess a genius IQ and a voracious appetite for scientific knowledge. "Night Passage" takes us on a dark journey into a Las Vegas where Earthlings and extra- terrestrials mingle and gamble- - and where one man takes a moonlit ride with a mystery woman from Mercury, tailed by some very scary pursuers. "The Mutant's Brother" is a malevolent mix of horror and SF, a tale of identical twins who each carry a frightful chromosome. One of them is also a monstrous serial killer. The literally chilling "A Pail of Air" takes place in an underground nest, where a family fights to survive in a sunless, moonless, post- apocalyptic world where even helium and carbon dioxide become crawling, shapeless threats.

Fritz Leiber was a storyteller and prophet for the ages. His work will never be dated or irrelevant. Treat this book like a crystal ball. These pages chronicle the world to come. You've been warned.

Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy. He excelled in all fields of speculative fiction, writing award- winning work in fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

Table of Contents:

Yesterday House - 1952
The Snowbank Orbit - 1962
Wanted - An Enemy - 1945
The Ship Sails at Midnight - 1950
The Foxholes of Mars - 1952
Far Reach to Cygnus - 1965
Femmequin 973 - 1957
Mysterious Doings in the Metropolitan Museum - 1974
The Big Trek - 1957
Space - 1958
Moon Duel - 1965
Poor Superman - 1951
Night Passage - 1975
The Mutant's Brother - 1943
Coming Attraction - 1950
The Black Ewe - 1950
Bullet with His Name - 1958
Mariana - 1960
Sanity - 1944
Time in the Round - 1957
Ship of Shadows - 1969
The Good New Days - 1965
Catch That Zeppelin! - 1975
Deadly Moon - 1960
The Man Who Was Married to Space and Time - 1979
Black Glass - 1978
Friends and Enemies - 1957
A Rite of Spring- 1977
America the Beautiful - 1970
A Pail of Air - 1951
The Winter Flies - 1967
Time Fighter - 1957
The Far Reach of Fritz Leiber - essay by John Pelan

Masters of Science Fiction: James Patrick Kelly

Masters of Science Fiction (Centipede Press): Book 2

James Patrick Kelly

What you're holding in your hands is part of a science fiction revolution. James Patrick Kelly is much more than an award-winning author. He's an SF visionary. His writing has redefined the cyberpunk genre, with a uniquely edgy, outré style. This book is a literal treasure trove of Kelly's most memorable stories and novellas. Here you'll see classic science fiction blended with New Age technology--and an unparalleled understanding of human psychology.

"Think Like a Dinosaur" takes us on a troubling, sometimes terrifying interstellar journey, as we track a young woman's transformation into an alien life-form, with some unexpected results. "The Last Judgment" is a startlingly original meld of noir and cyberpunk, as a tough private eye gets embroiled in a world dominated by a race of robots. Kelly also adds some murderous extra-terrestrials to the mix. In "Ten To The Sixteenth To One," it's 1962, and a young science fiction fan is shoring up his mundane world with comic books and pulp magazines--until he's visited by a creature that will alter the fate of the human race. "Daemon" is a piece of first-person fiction, in which Kelly himself is the lead character, attending a book signing and confronted by a fan from Hell. In "Going Deep," Kelly explores teen-age rebellion in outer space, with a compelling, complex, and cloned heroine whose talent for mind-melds makes texting look antiquated. "Mr. Boy" is Peter Cage, who's been surgically altered to remain forever young. Ever wish you were twelve years old again? Eternal youth isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Unplug your mobile devices and plug into James Patrick Kelly's vision of our future. Your head will never be the same again.

James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards; his fiction has been translated into twenty-two languages. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Robert Reed
Think Like a Dinosaur - (1995)
Crow - (1984)
St Theresa of the Aliens - (1984)
Rat - (1986)
Daemon - (1987)
Lovestory - (1998)
Itsy Bitsy Spider - (1997)
10¹⁶ to 1 - (1999)
Feel the Zaz - (2000)
Undone - (2001)
The Pyramid of Amirah - (2002)
Men Are Trouble - (2004)
The Wreck of the Godspeed - (2004)
The Last Judgment - (2012)
Going Deep - (2009)
Death Therapy - (1978)
Homo Neuter - (1981)
The Biggest - (2012)
Solstice - (1985)
Afterword by John Pelan

Masters of Science Fiction: Richard Wilson

Masters of Science Fiction (Centipede Press): Book 3

Richard Wilson

The late Richard Wilson's fifty-year career began with "Retribution" in Oswald Train's zine Science Adventure Stories and finished in 1988 with "The Name on the Book" in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine.

Wilson's writing was particularly noteworthy for its consistently high level of quality. Whether working at novel length or with short stories, Wilson was incapable of writing anything less than professional, highly polished work.

This volume collects nearly two dozen of his best stories, ranging from "The Hoaxters," "The Inhabited," and "Those Idiots from Earth" to his brilliant posthumously-published novella "At the Sign of the Boar's Head Nebula," originally slated for The Last Dangerous Visions and kindly made available to us by Harlan Ellison.

"At the Sign of the Boar's Head Nebula" is considered by several knowledgeable critics of the genre to be the finest single work that Mr. Wilson produced. It is in remarkably good company, joined with two other powerful novellas, "The Far King" and "The Nineteenth-Century Spaceship," giving Richard Wilson a fair claim to being one of the founding fathers of steampunk.

Along with the stories, this collection includes several highly regarded novelettes, including the Nebula Award-winning "Mother to the World," "The Story Writer," "Gone Past," "If A Man Answers," "It's Cold Outside," "A Man Spekith," and "See Me Not." Rounding out the book are a selection of the author's finest short pieces, making this a cornerstone volume for any serious collection of modern science fiction.

Richard Wilson (1920-1987), a member of the near-legendary Futurians, is considered by many to have been one of the most consistently excellent writers of science fiction. A journalist by trade, Wilson brought to his fiction a crisp economy of style and a precise language in a field often criticized for overly-florid prose. With stories running the gamut from the humorous to bone-chilling horror and everything in between, Richard Wilson could quite accurately be said to have written something for everyone.

Masters of Science Fiction: Kate Wilhelm Volume One

Masters of Science Fiction (Centipede Press): Book 4

Kate Wilhelm

In the 1950s, Kate Wilhelm began publishing science fiction after she read a story in a magazine and said, "I can do better than that." She quickly proved that she could do better, selling "The Mile-Long Spaceship" to John W. Campbell at Astounding. "You have an easy, pleasing and readable style, one that would, moreover, be a marked change in science fiction," John W. Campbell wrote to her in 1957. Soon she was invited to attend a Milford writers conference in Pennsylvania and there she met Damon Knight, whom she eventually married.

Working with Knight as he edited his Orbit anthology series, Kate Wilhelm came into her own as a writer, publishing stories that grounded their extrapolations in strong naturalistic depictions of the here-and-now. In tales such as "Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis" and "Baby, You Were Great," she demonstrated her facility with speculation and science-fictional ideas, while tales like "The Village" and "The Funeral" spoke with great relevance to social and political matters. She received a Nebula Award in 1969 for "The Planners," one of her many well-crafted stories of scientific inquiry.

Kate Wilhelm once said she didn't set out to cross genre lines with her fiction, she just had a blind spot when it came to genre boundaries. Consequently, her stories often blend elements of mystery, crime, and the supernatural with the scientific rigor of science fiction, and readers never know what to expect when they start to read stories like "The Gorgon Field" or "The Day of the Sharks" or "The Look Alike." There's no telling where these characters will take you.

Many of Kate Wilhelm's classics tell the tale of a young woman drawn into a web of scientific intrigue, and here you'll find "The Winter Beach," "The Fullness of Time," and "The Bird Cage," prime examples of this storytelling mode.

The depth of characterization and the psychological insight in stories like "The Downstairs Room" and "The Infinity Box" firmly established her at the forefront of her generation. The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed her "One of the masters of psychological fiction in America."

Over the next five decades, Wilhelm went on to fulfill the promise -- many times over -- of her first wave of top-flight work. With forty-one stories across two volumes, these books amply show the breadth and range of her fiction... and the power of her storytelling, too.

With forty-one stories (reprinted from a wide variety of sources), a perceptive introduction by Jack Dann, and an informative afterword by editor John Pelan, these two volumes are troves of reading pleasure for everyone lucky enough to get their hands on them.

In the field for over six decades, Kate Wilhelm carved out a remarkable career highlighted not only by the quality of her own work, but by her tireless efforts to give back to the field and smooth the way for those who would follow. Equally well-known as an author of mysteries, she still found time to revisit the genre of speculative fiction. She also founded the Clarion Workshop with her husband Damon Knight and writer Robin Scott Wilson.

Masters of Science Fiction: Kate Wilhelm Volume Two

Masters of Science Fiction (Centipede Press): Book 5

Kate Wilhelm

Masters of Science Fiction: Robert Sheckley

Masters of Science Fiction (Centipede Press): Book 6

Robert Sheckley

"Sheckley was a fantasist not entirely unknown to the public. For fifty years he had pursued his calling, inventing worlds both characteristic of the genre and unique to himself. From his brain had come planets of pleasure and worlds of pain. Nor had he neglected the multitudinous possibilities between."

So wrote Robert Sheckley in 2005, and so it was. And oh, those possibilities between!

From his first published work of fiction in 1952 until his death in 2005, Robert Sheckley gave us more than two hundred short stories, along with dozens of novels. He is generally known as one of the great humorists in the science fiction field -- his comedies are sometimes wry and often gonzo. They were very influential (Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy shows signs of Sheckley's sway) and you'll find them in fine form in such stories as "The Day the Aliens Came," "What Is Life?," and "The Two Sheckleys."

But Robert Sheckley's short fiction did more than just make us laugh. His stories, scared, thrilled, amused, excited, beguiled, inveigled, alarmed, charmed, and disarmed readers of science fiction anthologies and magazines for the better part of a century... and with this collection, they'll continue to do so.

Robert Sheckley wrote frequently of everyman heroes caught in a world they don't understand, and you'll find honest, hard-working joes in stories here like "The Altar," "A Ticket to Transai," and "The Mountain without a Name."

But he also liked to explore mythology and the nature of heroism, which you'll find in full force in such stories as "Agamemnon's Run," "The Quijote Robot," and "The Never-Ending Western Movie." Two other topics that interested Sheckley were the ways in which humans interact with their machines, and the ways in which humans interact with each other. Both themes are on grand display in stories like "Watchbird," "The Girls and Nugent Miller," and "Seventh Victim."

With thirty-one of his best stories -- including the short novels Dramocles and Minotaur Maze -- this collection is equally good for readers revisiting old friends and for those discovering Sheckley's work for the first time. From the dangers of courtship to the perils of the surveillance state, from the troubles with utopia to the meaning of life, these stories offer rewards for every reader.

Robert Sheckley was born in Brooklyn in 1928 and began publishing fiction in 1951. His short stories appeared in magazines such as Galaxy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Playboy. He published more than twenty novels and edited Omni magazine. His stories were adapted for television and film many times, most notably in the movies Freejack and The Tenth Victim. He received the Author Emeritus career honor from the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2001. He died in 2005.

Masters of Science Fiction: Jack Dann

Masters of Science Fiction (Centipede Press): Book 7

Jack Dann

In 1972, Jack Dann was a law school student and aspiring writer who had published stories in Fantastic when a story he had sent to Damon Knight for his famed Orbit anthology series was published. These early stories eventually led to a Nebula Award for his novella "Da Vinci Rising" in 1997 and to increasing acclaim as one of science fiction and fantasy's most original writers.

Jack Dann's imagined worlds are so rich in detail as to become hallucinatory; a reader doesn't so much peruse a Dann story as experience it. In "The Dybbuk Dolls," the owner of a sex shop in a future ghetto finds himself involved with weird customers, a political feud, alien dolls, and a number of complicated and often hilarious events. "Jumping the Road" and "Timetipping" also draw on Dann's Jewish heritage and his gift for humor, while "Amnesia," a darker tale in which a man searching for his dead wife plugs into a dying man's mind, demonstrates Dann's range, as does "Blind Shemmy," a story of gamblers playing for the highest of stakes.

In "Bad Medicine," a man searching for meaning in his life embarks on a spiritual quest with a Native American shaman, while the Ditmar Award-winning "The Diamond Pit," an homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald set in the 1920s, is an adventure story of an aviator shot down and confined by an eccentric millionaire in a luxurious prison from which he and other confined flyers must escape.

All of the stories in this volume reveal Dann's ability to draw the reader completely into his settings and the minds of his characters; even when we're not quite sure of where we are going, we are compelled to go along for the ride. John Kessel calls Dann's fiction "stories of transcendence, spiritual exploration, harrowing psychological transformations. Rebirth and conceptual breakthrough. And yet they are grounded in a developed sense of personal relationships, the rag and bone shop of the human heart." Set in places as diverse as Renaissance Italy, upstate New York, near-future Paris, Nazi Germany, modern-day Athens, and Hollywood in the 1950s, here are compulsively involving stories by a master storyteller.

Jack Dann's highly praised novels include Junction, The Man Who Melted, The Silent, Counting Coup, Shadows in the Stone, and the international bestseller The Memory Cathedral.

He has also been honored with the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award (twice), the Australian Aurealis Award (three times), the Chronos Award, the Darrell Award for Best Mid-South Novel, the Ditmar Award (five times), the Peter McNamara Achievement Award and also the Peter McNamara Convenors' Award for Excellence, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Premios Gilgames de Narrativa Fantastica award. Having grown up in the United States, he now lives in Australia with his partner, author and anthologist Janeen Webb. The complete contents appear below. Note: Jack Dann wrote two stories called "Visitors." They are completely different stories. That is why you see the title listed twice in the table of contents below.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Meet Jack Dann (by George Zebrowski)
Going Under (1981)
The Dybbuk Dolls (1975)
A Quiet Revolution for Death (1978)
Camps (1979)
Amnesia (1981)
Fairy Tale (1981)
Blind Shemmy (1983)
Bad Medicine (1984)
Tea (1988)
Kaddish (1989)
Jumping the Road (1992)
Voices (1991)
Timetipping (1975)
Da Vinci Rising (1995)
Marilyn (2000)
The Diamond Pit (2001)
Trainspotting in Winesburg (2016)
Visitors (1987)
Visitors (1977)
The Carbon Dreamer (2019)
Tattoos (1986)
The Island of Time (2013)
Jubilee (1995)
Mohammed's Angel (2009)
Café Culture (2007)
Waiting for Medusa (2013)
Ting-a-Ling (2001)
The Confession of a Stalker (Afterword by John Pelan)

Theodore Sturgeon: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography

Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Book 1

Lahna F. Diskin
Theodore Sturgeon

Checklist of Sturgeon's fiction and nonfiction published in books and periodicals (including fanzines) and annotated listing of secondary material.

Clifford D. Simak: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography

Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Book 2

Muriel R. Becker
Clifford D. Simak

Clifford D. Simak (1904-88) was a prolific science-fiction/fantasy author and, in addition, an editor for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Newspapers for over 36 years.

This informative bibliography is an extremely helpful tool for students, researchers and the curious admires of his many highly regarded novels and stories.

An informative introduction and an interview with the author add greatly to the detailed listings of Simak's published works.

When asked by Muriel Becker which of his stories pleased him more that others, Simak answered "A Choice of Gods" - his 1971 fictional rumination of the future of mankind.

John Brunner

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 1

Jad Smith

Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934-1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology.

In this first intensive review of Brunner's life and works, Jad Smith carefully demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, Smith approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including Brunner's uneasy association with the "New Wave" of science fiction in the 1960s and '70s.

This landmark study shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction and between hard and soft science fiction and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.

William Gibson

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 2

Gary Westfahl

The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Renowned scholar Gary Westfahl draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world.

Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, Westfahl delivers new information about his childhood and adolescence. He describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as Westfahl performs extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.

Gregory Benford

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 3

George E. Slusser

Gregory Benford is perhaps best known as the author of Benford's law of controversy: "Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available." That maxim is a quotation from Timescape, Benford's Nebula and Campbell Award-winning 1980 novel, which established his work as an exemplar of "hard science fiction," dedicated to working out the consequences of modern science rather than substituting pseudoscience for fantasy. An astrophysicist by training and profession, Benford published more than twenty novels, over one hundred short stories, some fifty essays, and myriad articles that display both his scientific rigor as well as a recognition of literary traditions.

In this study, George Slusser explores the extraordinary, seemingly inexhaustible display of creative energy in Gregory Benford's life and work. By identifying direct sources and making parallels with other works and writers, Slusser reveals the vast scope of Benford's knowledge, both of literature and of the major scientific and philosophical issues of our time. Slusser also discusses Benford's numerous scientific articles and nonfiction books and includes a new interview with Benford.

Greg Egan

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 4

Karen Burnham

Greg Egan (1961- ) publishes works that challenge readers with rigorous, deeply-informed scientific speculation. He unapologetically delves into mathematics, physics, and other disciplines in his prose, putting him in the vanguard of the hard science fiction renaissance of the 1990s.

A working physicist and engineer, Karen Burnham is uniquely positioned to provide an in-depth study of Egan's science-heavy oeuvre. Her survey of the author's career covers novels like Permutation City and Schild's Ladder and the Hugo Award-winning novella "Oceanic," analyzing how Egan used cutting-edge scientific theory to explore ethical questions and the nature of humanity. As Burnham shows, Egan's collected works constitute a bold artistic statement: that narratives of science are equal to those of poetry and drama, and that science holds a place in the human condition as exalted as religion or art.

The volume includes a rare interview with the famously press-shy Egan covering his works, themes, intellectual interests, and thought processes.

Ray Bradbury

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 5

David Seed

As much as any individual, Ray Bradbury brought science fiction's ideas into the mainstream. Yet he transcended the genre in both form and popularity, using its trappings to explore timely social concerns and the kaleidoscope of human experience while in the process becoming one of America's most beloved authors.

David Seed follows Bradbury's long career from the early short story masterpieces through his work in a wide variety of broadcast and film genres to the influential cultural commentary he spread via essays, speeches, and interviews. Mining Bradbury's classics and hard-to-find archival, literary, and cultural materials, Seed analyzes how the author's views on technology, authoritarianism, and censorship affected his art; how his Midwest of dream and dread brought his work to life; and the ways film and television influenced his creative process and visually-oriented prose style. The result is a passionate statement on Bradbury's status as an essential literary writer deserving of a place in the cultural history of his time.

Lois McMaster Bujold

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 6

Edward James

Readers have awarded Lois McMaster Bujold four Hugo Awards for Best Novel, a number matched only by Robert Heinlein. Her Vorkosigan series redefined space opera with its emotional depth and explorations of themes such as bias against the disabled, economic exploitation, and the role of women in society.

Acclaimed science fiction scholar Edward James traces Bujold's career, showing how Bujold emerged from fanzine culture to win devoted male and female readers despite working in genres -- military SF, space opera -- perceived as solely by and for males. Devoted to old-school ideas such as faith in humanity and the desire to probe and do good in the universe, Bujold simultaneously subverted genre conventions and experimented with forms that led her in bold creative directions. As James shows, her iconic hero Miles Vorkosigan -- unimposing, physically impaired, self-conscious to a fault -- embodied Bujold's thematic concerns. The sheer humanity of her characters, meanwhile, gained her a legion of fans eager to provide her with feedback, expand her vision through fan fiction, and follow her into fantasy.

Frederik Pohl

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 7

Michael R. Page

One of science fiction's undisputed grandmasters, Frederik Pohl built an astonishing career that spanned more than seven decades. Along the way he won millions of readers and seemingly as many awards while producing novels, short stories, and essays that left a profound mark on the genre.

In this first-of-its-kind study, Michael R. Page traces Pohl's journey as an author but also uncovers his role as a transformative figure who shaped the genre as a literary agent, book editor, and in Gardner Dozois' words, "quite probably the best SF magazine editor who ever lived."

Alfred Bester

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 8

Jad Smith

Alfred Bester's classic short stories and the canonical novel The Stars My Destination made him a science fiction legend. Fans and scholars praise him as a genre-bending pioneer and cyberpunk forefather. Writers like Neil Gaiman and William Gibson celebrate his prophetic vision and stylistic innovations.

Jad Smith traces the career of the unlikeliest of SF icons. Winner of the first Hugo Award for The Demolished Man, Bester also worked in comics, radio, and TV, and his intermittent SF writing led some critics to brand him a dabbler. In the 1960s, however, New Wave writers championed his work, and his reputation grew. Smith follows Bester's journey from consummate outsider to an artist venerated for foundational works that influenced the New Wave and cyberpunk revolutions. He also explores the little-known roots of a wayward journey fueled by curiosity, disappointment with the SF mainstream, and an artist's determination to go his own way.

Octavia E. Butler

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 9

Gerry Canavan

"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers -- informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction.

Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon.

The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.

Iain M. Banks

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 10

Paul Kincaid

Finalist for Hugo Award for Best Related Work

The 1987 publication of Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas helped trigger the British renaissance of radical hard science fiction and influenced a generation of New Space Opera masters. The thirteen SF novels that followed inspired an avid fandom and intense intellectual engagement while Banks's mainstream books vaulted him to the top of the Scottish literary scene.

Paul Kincaid has written the first study of Iain M. Banks to explore the confluence of his SF and literary techniques and sensibilities. As Kincaid shows, the two powerful aspects of Banks's work flowed into each other, blurring a line that critics too often treat as clear-cut. Banks's gift for black humor and a honed skepticism regarding politics and religion found expression even as he orchestrated the vast, galaxy-spanning vistas in his novels of The Culture.

In examining Banks's entire SF oeuvre, Kincaid unlocks the set of ideas Banks drew upon, ideas that spoke to an unusually varied readership that praised him as a visionary and reveled in the distinctive character of his works. Entertaining and broad in scope, Iain M. Banks offers new insights on one of the most admired figures in contemporary science fiction.

J. G. Ballard

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 11

D. Harlan Wilson

Prophetic short stories and apocalyptic novels like The Crystal World made J. G. Ballard a foundational figure in the British New Wave. Rejecting the science fiction of rockets and aliens, he explored an inner space of humanity informed by psychiatry and biology and shaped by Surrealism. Later in his career, Ballard's combustible plots and violent imagery spurred controversy--even legal action--while his autobiographical 1984 war novel Empire of the Sun brought him fame. D. Harlan Wilson offers the first career-spanning analysis of an author who helped steer SF in new, if startling, directions. Here was a writer committed to moral ambiguity, one who drowned the world and erected a London high-rise doomed to descend into savagery--and coolly picked apart the characters trapped within each story. Wilson also examines Ballard's methods, his influence on cyberpunk, and the ways his fiction operates within the sphere of our larger culture and within SF itself.

Arthur C. Clarke

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 12

Gary Westfahl

Already renowned for his science fiction and scientific nonfiction, Arthur C. Clarke became the world's most famous science fiction writer after the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He then produced novels like Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise that many regard as his finest works. Gary Westfahl closely examines Clarke's remarkable career, ranging from his forgotten juvenilia to the passages he completed for a final novel, The Last Theorem.

As Westfahl explains, Clarke's science fiction offered original perspectives on subjects like new inventions, space travel, humanity's destiny, alien encounters, the undersea world, and religion. While not inclined to mysticism, Clarke necessarily employed mystical language to describe the fantastic achievements of advanced aliens and future humans. Westfahl also contradicts the common perception that Clarke's characters were bland and underdeveloped, arguing that these reticent, solitary individuals, who avoid conventional relationships, represent his most significant prediction of the future, as they embody the increasingly common lifestyle of people in the twenty-first century.

Joanna Russ

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 13

Gwyneth Jones

Experimental, strange, and unabashedly feminist, Joanna Russ's groundbreaking science fiction grew out of a belief that the genre was ideal for expressing radical thought. Her essays and criticism, meanwhile, helped shape the field and still exercise a powerful influence in both SF and feminist literary studies.

Award-winning author and critic Gwyneth Jones offers a new appraisal of Russ's work and ideas. After years working in male-dominated SF, Russ emerged in the late 1960s with Alyx, the uber-capable can-do heroine at the heart of Picnic on Paradise and other popular stories and books. Soon, Russ's fearless embrace of gender politics and life as an out lesbian made her a target for male outrage while feminist classics like The Female Man and The Two of Them took SF in innovative new directions. Jones also delves into Russ's longtime work as a critic of figures as diverse as Lovecraft and Cather, her foundational place in feminist fandom, important essays like "Amor Vincit Foeminam," and her career in academia.

Kim Stanley Robinson

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 14

Robert Markley

Award-winning epics like the Mars Trilogy and groundbreaking alternative histories like The Days of Rice and Salt have brought Kim Stanley Robinson to the forefront of contemporary science fiction. Mixing subject matter from a dizzying number of fields with his own complex ecological and philosophical concerns, Robinson explores how humanity might pursue utopian social action as a strategy for its own survival.

Robert Markley examines the works of an author engaged with the fundamental question of how we--as individuals, as a civilization, and as a species--might go forward. By building stories on huge time scales, Robinson lays out the scientific and human processes that fuel humanity's struggle toward a more just and environmentally stable world or system of worlds. His works invite readers to contemplate how to achieve, and live in, these numerous possible futures. They also challenge us to see that SF's literary, cultural, and philosophical significance have made it the preeminent literary genre for examining where we stand today in human and planetary history.

Roger Zelazny

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Book 15

F. Brett Cox

Challenging convention with the SF nonconformist

Roger Zelazny combined poetic prose with fearless literary ambition to become one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1960s. Yet many critics found his later novels underachieving and his turn to fantasy a disappointment. F. Brett Cox surveys the landscape of Zelazny's creative life and contradictions. Launched by the classic 1963 short story "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," Zelazny soon won the Hugo Award for Best Novel with …And Call Me Conrad and two years later won again for Lord of Light. Cox looks at the author's overnight success and follows Zelazny into a period of continued formal experimentation, the commercial triumph of the Amber sword and sorcery novels, and renewed acclaim for Hugo-winning novellas such as "Home Is the Hangman" and "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai." Throughout, Cox analyzes aspects of Zelazny's art, from his preference for poetically alienated protagonists to the ways his plots reflected his determined individualism.

Clear-eyed and detailed, Roger Zelazny provides an up-to-date reconsideration of an often-misunderstood SF maverick.