Collection: Science Fiction

Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure.

From author Michael Swanwick--one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction--comes the Nebula award-winning masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions.

The "Jubilee Tides" will drown the continents of the planet Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two-centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. A man from the Bureau of Proscribed Technologies has been sent to investigate. For Gregorian has come, a genius renegade scientist and charismatic bush wizard. With magic and forbidden technology, he plans to remake the rotting dying world in his own evil image-and to force whom or whatever remains on its diminishing surface toward a terrifying, astonishing confrontation with death and transcendence.

This novel of surreal hard SF was widely compared to the fiction of Gene Wolfe when it was first published, and Swanwick has gone on in the two decades since its first publication to become recognized as one of the finest living SF and fantasy writers.

With a new introduction by John Clute, author of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Jason Sterling had a simple life by all accounts. He had worked the same job his entire adult life, he had never married and he had no children. He was used to doing things on his own. His comfortable life was shaken to the core the day he learned of his fathers death. It was a mysterious meeting that set life altering events in motion and the allure of a new life was too great to walk away from. When an Electromagnetic Pulse brings the modern world to its knees, Jason's choice proves to be the right one.

This title is no longer available through this listing. Please search 9781957721026 for the Destiny Grimoire Anthology, Volume III.

Known in his lifetime primarily to readers of science fiction, Philip K. Dick is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethem's words, "wielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him."

This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick's most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality, and an interplanetary drug tycoon can transform himself into a godlike figure transcending even physical death.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic society where status is measured by the possession of live animals and religious life is focused on a television personality, was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Ubik (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryonically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory "half-life," pursues Dick's theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions, as time collapses on itself and characters stranded in past eras search desperately for the elusive, constantly shape-shifting panacea Ubik. As with most of Dick's novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books.

Posing the questions "What is human?" and "What is real?" in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced works--fantastic and weird, yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculation--that are startlingly prescient imaginative anticipations of twenty-first-century quandaries.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Years ago, the Killjoys fought against the tyrannical megacorporation Better Living Industries, costing them their lives, save for one--the mysterious Girl. Today, the followers of the original Killjoys languish in the Desert while BLI systematically strips citizens of their individuality. As the fight for freedom fades, it's left to the Girl to take up the mantle and bring down the fearsome BLI! Collects The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys #1-#6 and "Dead Satellites" from Free Comic Book Day 2013.

* From Gerard Way, creator of the Eisner Award-winning The Umbrella Academy!

* Hardcover limited to 2,500 copies!

* Hardcover includes an extensive sketchbook with artwork from Becky Cloonan, Gabriel Bá, Paul Pope, Gerard Way, Fábio Moon, Rafael Grampá, and Brian Ewing.

A new translation of one of the world's greatest adventure Stories

Originally published in 1864, this Jules Verne classic has wowed generations of readers with its portrayal of an imaginary odyssey into a subterranean wonderland. When Axel deciphers an old parchment describing a secret passage through a volcano to the center of the earth, nothing will stop his eccentric Uncle Lidenbrock from setting out at once. With silent Hans as guide, the two men encounter natural hazards, prehistoric beasts, and other curiosities on their perilous, astonishing, terrifying trek through the underworld.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A contemporary Earthman joins a community of explorers who travel to the farthest reaches of the universe, seeking traces of intelligence. Along the way, they encounter nautiloid water beings, races of hyperspiders and hyperfish, composite group intelligences, plantlike creatures, and other strange life forms. Their dramatic voyage unfolds against a backdrop of life-and-death struggles on a cosmic scale.

Star Maker is the science fiction classic about a human who is transported out of his body and finds himself able to explore space and other planets. The story describes a history of life in the universe and tackles themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is the progressive unity between different civilizations. Some of the elements and themes prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be one of the finest works of science fiction ever written.

Godzilla returns, and the world will never be the same! Giant monsters are appearing across the globe and leaving complete devastation in their wake. But who-or what-might be behind their attacks? It's up to Commander Steven Woods and his Counter-Kaiju Reaction forces to hold the monsters at bay, while young Lucy Casprell and her scientific research group, the Kaiju Watchers, attempt to find the truth behind the invasions. Collects the first 12 issues of the series.

In the first chapter of this epic trilogy, the outcome of the historic War of the Ancients is forever altered by the arrival of three time-lost heroes: Krasus, the dragon mage whose great power and memories of the ancient conflict have inexplicably diminished; the human wizard Rhonin, whose thoughts are divided between his family and the seductive source of his now-growing power; and Broxigar, a weathered orc veteran who seeks a glorious death in combat. But unless these unlikely allies can convince the demigod, Cenarius, and the untrusting night elves of their queen's treachery, the burning Legion's gateway into Azeroth will open anew. And this time -- the struggles of the past may well spill over into the future...

This new edition reintroduces the Amory Wars epic tale! Follow the mythology of Coheed and Cambria through this engaging work from frontman Claudio Sanchez.

In response to overwhelming fan demand, BOOM! Studios has created this new edition of The Amory Wars: In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3.

New York Times bestselling author Peter David joins Coheed & Cambria front man Claudio Sanchez for this science fiction franchise beloved by many diehard fans! A gripping story for both new and old fans. As revolution thunders throughout The Keywork, Claudio Killgannon hears his calling as a hero. So why does he not answer it? This is space opera like you've never seen before!

"Funny, wise, and infused with a sense of wonder and knowledge....Nobody else made myths real and valuable in the way Roger Zelazny could."
--Neil Gaiman

Lord of Light is a classic tale of the far future from the incomparable Roger Zelazny. Winner of the Hugo Award--one of six Zelazny received over the course of his legendary career, as well as three Nebula Awards and numerous other honors--Lord of Light stands with Joe Haldeman's The Forever War and Frank Herbert's Dune as one of the seminal novels that changed the way readers looked at science fiction. Experience it and you will understand why New York Times bestselling sf author Greg Bear says, "Reading Zelazny is like dropping into a Mozart string quartet as played by Thelonius Monk."

HIS DARK MATERIALS IS NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SERIES STARRING DAFNE KEEN, RUTH WILSON, ANDREW SCOTT, AND LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA!

The spellbinding sequel to The Golden Compass, the modern fantasy classic that Entertainment Weekly named an "All-Time Greatest Novel" and Newsweek hailed as a "Top 100 Book of All Time," continues the epic adventure, catapulting readers between worlds, and toward a devastating discovery.

Lost in a new world, Lyra finds Will--a boy on the run, a murderer--a worthy and welcome ally. For this is a world where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and witches share the skies with troops of angels.

Each is searching--Lyra for the meaning of Dark Matter, Will for his missing father--but what they find instead is a deadly secret, a knife of untold power. And neither Lyra nor Will suspects how tightly their lives, their loves, their destinies are bound together...until they are split apart.

A #1 New York Times Bestseller
Published in 40 Countries

"Just as quick-moving and unputdownable as The Golden Compass. . . . The mysteries deepen and the wonders grow even more extravagant." --The Washington Post

"Pullman's imagination soars . . . A literary rollercoaster ride you won't want to miss."--The Boston Globe

"The story gallops with ferocious momentum . . . Devilishly inventive." --The New York Times Book Review

Don't miss Philip Pullman's epic new trilogy set in the world of His Dark Materials!
** THE BOOK OF DUST **
La Belle Sauvage
The Secret Commonwealth

A shipwrecked Edward Prendick finds himself stranded on a remote Noble island, the guest of a notorious scientist, Doctor Moreau. Disturbed by the cries of animals in pain, and by his encounters with half-bestial creatures, Edward slowly realizes his danger and the extremes of the Doctor's experiments.

Saturated in pain and disgust, suffused with grotesque and often unbearable images of torture and bodily mutilation, The Island of Doctor Moreau is unquestionably a shocking novel. It is also a serious, and highly knowledgeable, philosophical engagement with Wells's times, with their climate of scientific openness and advancement, but also their anxieties about the ethical nature of scientific discoveries, and their implications for religion. Darryl Jones's introduction places the book in both its scientific and literary context; with the Origin of Species and Gulliver's Travels, and argues that The Island of Doctor Moreau is, like all of Wells's best fiction, is fundamentally a novel of ideas.

In our modern era, we like to congratulate ourselves for our sophistication, knowing that we have doubtless created a world that our feckless ancestors could never have imagined. Actually reading the works of those ancestors would disabuse us of any such notion, and E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops is a case in point. Not only does it seem that Forster has contemplated the ubiquitous 'Zoom' call, but he correctly sensed the deadening of the soul that would accompany the faux-mastery of Nature, expressing itself through technology.

In The Machine Stops the height of mankind's advances was The Machine, and it cared for every aspect of human experience, and anticipated every human need, until such time that there was nothing left for humans to do except eat, and, if the algorithm approved, procreate; and when the algorithm decided Euthanasia was due, then Euthanasia was happily accepted. The Machine was not just the pinnacle of human ingenuity, it was Progress Incarnate. And then... the Machine Stopped. Today, we hail our own progress, technological and societal. If our machine stops, what then? Do we really suppose it is eternal?

Before the multi-million, runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown set his razor-sharp research and storytelling skills on the most powerful intelligence organization on earth--the National Security Agency (NSA)--in this thrilling novel, Digital Fortress.

When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage--not by guns or bombs -- but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence. Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

A visionary work of science fiction that introduced the word "robot"

Written in 1920, premiered in Prague in 1921, and first performed in New York in 1922--garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word robot. Mass-produced as efficient laborers to serve man, Capek's Robots are an android product--they remember everything but think of nothing new. But the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning, and the humans they serve stop reproducing. When the Robots revolt, killing all but one of their masters, they must strain to learn the secret of self-duplication. It is not until two Robots fall in love and are christened "Adam" and "Eve" by the last surviving human that Nature emerges triumphant.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.