The ​Secret History of Science Fiction

J. G. Ballard - The ​Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
“More ​than one thousand compelling pages from one of the most haunting, cogent, and individual imaginations in contemporary literature.”—William Boyd The American publication of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a landmark event. Increasingly recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic novelists, J. G. Ballard was a “writer of enormous inventive powers,” who, in the words of Malcolm Bradbury, possessed, “like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of imagination.” Best known for his novels, such as Empire of the Sun and Crash, Ballard rose to fame as the “ideal chronicler of disturbed modernity” (The Observer). Perhaps less known, though equally brilliant, were his devastatingly original short stories, which span nearly fifty years and reveal an unparalleled prescience so unique that a new word—Ballardian—had to be invented. Ballard, who wrote that “short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available,” regretted the fact that the public had increasingly lost its ability to appreciate them. With 98 pulse-quickening stories, this volume helps restore the very art form that Ballard feared was comatose. Ballard’s inimitable style was already present in his early stories, most of them published in science fiction magazines. These stories are surreal, richly atmospheric and splendidly elliptical, featuring an assortment of psychotropic houses, time-traveling assassins, and cities without clocks. Over the next fifty years, his fierce imaginative energy propelled him to explore new topics, including the dehumanization of technology, the brutality of the corporation, and nuclear Armageddon. Depicting the human soul as “being enervated and corrupted by the modern world” (New York Times), Ballard began to examine themes like overpopulation, as in “Billenium,” a claustrophobic imagining of a world of 20 billion people crammed into four-square-meter rooms, or the false realities of modern media, as in the classic “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,” a faux-psychological study of the sexual and violent reactions elicited by viewing Reagan’s face on television, in which Ballard predicted the unholy fusion of pop culture and sound-bite politics thirteen years before Reagan became president. Given Ballard’s heightened powers of perception, it is astonishing that the dehumanized world that he apprehended so acutely neither diminished his own febrile imagination nor his engagement with mankind, evident in every story, including two new ones for this American edition. So eerily prophetic is his vision, so commanding are his literary gifts, the import and insight of J. G. Ballard’s deeply humanistic and transcendent works can only grow in years to come.

Ismeretlen szerző - Monsters
Here ​are future nighmares - the enemies that await us both within and outside our world, from a small town in Kansas to the seas of Venus. Fantastic and thrilling short novels and stories by science fiction's bestselling authors.

Ismeretlen szerző - The ​Locus Awards
Now, ​for the first time, the best of the Locus Awards for short fiction are gathered in one volume. Spanning the absolute finest in science fiction and fantasy short fiction for the last thirty years, this anthology is an indispensable guide to speculative fiction from the classic to the outrageous by the leaders of the field.

Arthur C. Clarke - The ​Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke
The ​Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, (ISBN 0-575-07065-X), first published in 2001, is a collection of almost every science fiction story shorter than novel length that Arthur C. Clarke has ever published: more than 100 in all arranged in order of publication, from "Travel by Wire!" in 1937 through to "Improving the Neighbourhood" in 1999. The story "Improving The Neighbourhood" has the distinction of being the first fiction published in the journal Nature.

Ursula K. Le Guin - The ​Birthday of the World
The ​recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards, the renowned writer Ursula K. Le Guin has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in _The Birthday of the World_, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

Peter F. Hamilton - The ​Temporal Void
The ​second book in Peter F. Hamilton's bestselling Void Trilogy Humanity is in turmoil as a fanatical cult, inspired by projected dreams from the Void, prepares to journey beyond its boundaries - no matter what they will unleash in doing so... Investigator Paula Myo is determined to find the Void's 'Second Dreamer', Araminta, who is channelling the latest visions of Edeard the Waterwalker. A messiah, it's his crusade against injustice that has influenced billions to risk journeying into the unknown. It's only as the dreams reach their culmination and Edeard's story nears its end that the Void's true nature will be revealed. And by then it may be too late...

Neal Stephenson - Snow ​Crash (angol)
The ​only relief from the sea of logos is within the well-guarded borders of the Burbclaves. Is it any wonder that most sane folks have forsaken the real world and chosen to live in the computer-generated universe of virtual reality? In a major city, the size of a dozen Manhattans, is a domain of pleasures limited only by the imagination. But now a strange new computer virus called Snow Crash is striking down hackers everywhere, leaving an unlikely young man as humankind's last best hope.

Edgar Rice Burroughs - A ​Mars sakkjátékosai
Véres ​játszma. Héliumi Tara hercegnő a különös, test nélküli szellem-lények fogságába kerül, ahonnan egy titokzatos ismeretlen harcos kiszabadítja. Ám a Mars urának lányát újabb veszély fenyegeti, minthogy egy vérre menő, élő sakkjátszma folyik őérte.

H. P. Lovecraft - The ​Call of Cthulhu
H.P. ​Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre for the 20th century, discarding witches and ghosts and envisaging mankind as an outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe.

Brian Herbert - Kevin J. Anderson - The ​Winds of Dune
With ​their usual skill, Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson have taken ideas left behind by Frank Herbert and filled them with living characters and a true sense of wonder. Where Paul of Dune picked up the saga directly after the events of Dune, The Winds of Dune begins after the events of Dune Messiah. Paul has walked off into the sand, blind, and is presumed dead. Jessica and Gurney are on Caladan; Alia is trying to hold the Imperial government together with Duncan; Mohiam dead at the hands of Stilgar; Irulan imprisoned. Paul’s former friend, Bronso of Ix, now seems to be leading opposition to the House of Atreides. Herbert and Anderson’s newest book in this landmark series will concentrate on these characters as well the growing battle between Jessica, and her daughter, Alia.

Isaac Asimov - Robot ​Dreams
Robot ​Dreams collects 21 of Isaac Asimov's short stories spanning the body of his fiction from the 1940s to the 1980s----exploring not only the future of technology, but the future of humanity's maturity and growth.

Gareth Roberts - Douglas Adams - Shada ​(angol)
The ​Doctor's old friend and fellow Time Lord Professor Chronotis has retired to Cambridge University - where nobody will notice if he lives for centuries. But now he needs help from the Doctor, Romana and K9. When he left Gallifrey he took with him a few little souvenirs - most of them are harmless. But one of them is extremely dangerous. The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey isn't a book for Time Tots. It is one of the Artefacts, dating from the dark days of Rassilon. It must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. The sinister Skagra most definitely has the wrong hands. He wants the book. He wants to discover the truth behind Shada. And he wants the Doctor's mind... Based on the scripts for the original television series by the legendary Douglas Adams, Shada retells an adventure that never made it to the screen. This epic 'lost' adventure from 1979 features the Fourth Doctor and Romana as played by Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, written by Doctor Who's then script editor Douglas Adams.

Greg Bear - Moving ​Mars
She ​is a daughter of one of Mars's oldest, most conservative Binding Multiples - the extended family sindicates that colonized the red planet. But Cassiea Majumdar has a dream of an independent Mars, born in the student protests of 2171. During those breaf days of idealism she forged bonds of friendship and hatred that set the stage for an astonishing revolution of Mars. Charles Franklin, too, was caught up in those days of passionate youth. Cassiea's first love and a brilliant physicist, he is so dedicated to science that he seeks to link his mind to the most advanced artificial intelligence in the solar system. It will cost him a lifetime with Casseia Majumdar. It will teach him the secrets of space and time.

Hugh Howey - Wool ​Omnibus
Thousands ​of them have lived underground. They've lived there so long, there are only legends about people living anywhere else. Such a life requires rules. Strict rules. There are things that must not be discussed. Like going outside. Never mention you might like going outside. Or you'll get what you wish for.

Karl Schroeder - Ventus
Jordan ​Mason of the planet Ventus comes from a long line of stoneworkers, and he has a clear understanding of his place in his world. He is subservient to the aristocracy, who in turn bow to the Winds, who control the weather, plant and animal life, and human undertakings. Lately, Jordan has had troubling visions, in which his immediate surroundings are blotted out by a different sky and a different forest, and he sees through another man's eyes. One night, searching in the forest for his sister, Jordan meets captivating Calandria May, who says she can explain his visions if he will help track Armiger, through whose eyes he has gazed. Armiger is a rogue artificial intelligence (AI), sent to Ventus to co-opt the Winds, which are also AIs, into enslaving humans and creating a powerful, ruthless world-mind. Through Armiger's eyes, Jordan sees how his interactions with an independent, tender peasant woman and a fierce, lonely queen are changing the AI's cold objectives. As Jordan and Calandria close in on Armiger, they see that the Winds are divided into pro-human and antihuman camps. Wondering whether he is on the right side, Jordan uses his visionary power to speak directly to the Winds. A final battle for Ventus brings human generals, intelligent moons, and a roving off-planet archaeologist onstage. Although strictly hard sf, full of technology, Schroeder's novel is so rich in character and emotion that it feels like classic fantasy.

Arthur C. Clarke - The ​Songs of Distant Earth
Just ​a few islands in a planetwide ocean, Thalassa was a veritable paradise-home to one of the small colonies founded centuries before by robot Mother Ships when the Sun had gone nova and mankind had fled Earth. Mesmerized by the beauty of Thalassa and overwhelmed by its vast resources, the colonists lived an idyllic existence, unaware of the monumental evolutionary event slowly taking place beneath their seas... Then the Magellan arrived in orbit carrying one million refugees from the last, mad days on Earth. And suddenly uncertainty and change had come to the placid paradise that was Thalassa.

John Scalzi - Earth ​Below, Sky Above
At ​last, the Earth and the Colonial Union have begun formal discussions about their relationship in the futurea chance for the divisions in humanity to be repaired. The diplomats and crew of the Clarke are on hand to help with the process, including Ambassador Ode Abumwe and CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson, both of whom were born on Earth. But not everyone wants The Human Division to be repaired...and they will go to great length to make sure it isnt.

J. G. Ballard - The ​Terminal Beach
The ​Terminal Beach is one of Ballard's most brilliant collections of short stories, ranging from the title story's disturbing picture of an abandoned atomic testing island in the Pacific to the shocking Oedipal fantasy of 'The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon'.At the heart of the stories lies the bitter paradox that the extraordinary creative power of man's imagination is matched only by his reckless instinct for destruction.

Jerry Oltion - Alliance
Derec ​has restored the original Robot City, but his mother's creations--three, shapechanging robots--threaten to destroy the city his father built. They urge the other robots not to obey Derec's or Dr. Avery's orders. Can they disobey the Three Laws of Robotics? A robot revolution hangs in the balance.

Ismeretlen szerző - Songs ​of the Dying Earth
To ​honor the magnificent career of Jack Vance, one unparalleled in achievement and impact, George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, with the full cooperation of Vance, his family, and his agents, have created a Jack Vance tribute anthology: Songs of the Dying Earth. The best of today's fantasy writers to return to the unique and evocative milieu of The Dying Earth, from which they and so many others have drawn so much inspiration, to create their own brand-new adventures in the world of Jack Vance’s greatest novel. Half a century ago, Jack Vance created the world of the Dying Earth, and fantasy has never been the same. Now, for the first time ever, Jack has agreed to open this bizarre and darkly beautiful world to other fantasists, to play in as their very own. To say that other fantasy writers are excited by this prospect is a gross understatement; one has told us that he'd crawl through broken glass for the chance to write for the anthology, another that he'd gladly give up his right arm for the privilege. That's the kind of regard in which Jack Vance and The Dying Earth are held by generations of his peers. This book contains original stories from George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, Elizabeth Moon, Tanith Lee, Tad Williams, Kage Baker, and Robert Silverberg, along with fifteen others--as well as an introduction by Dean Koontz.