A classic science fiction tale of artifical worlds by one of the great American writers of the 20th century
Glen Runciter is dead.
Or is he?
Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss. And the world around them is warping and regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out.
If it hasn't already.
Readers minds have been blown by Ubik:
'Sheer craziness, a book defying any straightforward synopsis . . . a unique time travel adventure that could only be concocted from the fertile psychedelic imagination of the incomparable PKD' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'This pre-cyberpunk gigglefest was an absolute joy to behold . . . I would bill it as a Truman Show-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-Barbarella-type of sci-fi' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'If you have not read PKD before I highly recommend Ubik as the gateway into his wonderfully weird fiction. I kind of envy you' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'UBIK is much stranger and more darkly humorous than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep . . . although there are many humorous elements, overall the story is dark, philosophical, and just plain disorienting. I found the book impossible to put down' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'A darkly humorous blurring of lines between reality and illusion and a concomitant degree of paranoia' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'About eighty decades ahead of its time, only Ubik can help to process the overwhelmingness of the contemporary age. Chock full of post-death theology, psionics, proto-cyberpunk, and retro-retro-retro future nostalgia' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'We spend a great deal of it unsure of what is real and what isn't and some of the ideas Dick manages to throw in as the story progresses had me grinning and shaking my head at the crazy logic of it all' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
'The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck - It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.'
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house he is disturbed by the horrifying discoveries he makes in his client's castle. But worse, Harker's actions introduce Dracula to London. Soon afterwards, the Count embarks on a reign of seduction and terror. And all, it seems, who encounter the charismatic Eastern European aristocrat - a succession of madmen, physicians and beautiful women - are never seen in daylight again...
Bram Stoker's DRACULA has inspired countless movies, books, and plays since it's first publication in 1897. Few, if any, have been fully faithful to Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. But in DRACULA, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.
Growing up on the edge of the Missouri wilderness in the 1830s, Nadya knew she was not like other girls. But when she became a woman and the Change came, she discovered just how different she was. For Nadya was a shapechanger, a werewolf like her mother and father before her...
The World Next Door.
Engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, it's connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world - and, predictably, exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.
Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years ago. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometime drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny Hypothetical machines.
Now Lise, Turk, a Martian woman, and a boy who has been engineered to communicate with the Hypotheticals, are drawn to a place in the desert where this seemingly hospitable world has become suddenly very alien indeed - and the nature of time is being once again twisted by entities unknown.
1588: Queen Elizabeth is felled by an assassin's bullet. Within the week, the Spanish Armada had set sail, and its victory changed the course of history.
1968: England is still dominated by the Church of Rome. There are no telephones, no television, no nuclear power. As Catholicism and the Inquisition tighten their grip, rebellion is growing.
In the far future, after human civilization has spread through the galaxy, communications begin to arrive in an apparently alien language. They appear to threaten invasion, but in order to counter the threat, the messages must first be understood.
Joint winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1966
What The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy, Dune is to science fiction. Presenting Children of Dune, the third book in one of the most influential series of all time, which has inspired countless other stories for more than half a century, this is an awe-inspiring world, and a story of truly epic scope.
The sand-blasted world of Arrakis has become green, watered and fertile. Old Paul Atreides, who led the desert Fremen to political and religious domination of the galaxy, is gone.
But for the children of Dune, the very blossoming of their land contains the seeds of its own destruction. The altered climate is destroying the giant sandworms, and this in turn is disastrous for the planet's economy.
Leto and Ghanima, Paul Atreides's twin children and his heirs, can see possible solutions - but fanatics begin to challenge the rule of the all-powerful Atreides empire, and more than economic disaster threatens ...
Read the series which inspired the Academy Award-winning and jaw-dropping cinematic events Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two. A science fiction spectacular like no other, this is a deeply climate conscious novel, and a compelling family saga for the ages.
Dune reading order:
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse Dune
When his wife is murdered on his wedding day, Lucas Trask launches himself on a quest for revenge. Using his personal fortune, he buys a spaceship and becomes a Space Viking, raiding worlds while hunting for his wife's killer. But raiding is not his destiny, and he gradually becomes a trader, starting to build a galactic empire. Before he can achieve his new goals, however, he must still deal with his wife's killer.
Killdozer is the third volume of a series of the complete short stories from Theodore Sturgeon's career. It contains a few of his best and most famous short stories: "Medusa," "Killdozer " and "Mewhu's Jet." The series editor Paul Williams has dug into the background of each story, and come up with a lot of interesting lore about Sturgeon. Especially of interest in this volume is the alternative original ending to "Mewhu's Jet."
Robert Charles Wilson, says The New York Times, "writes superior science fiction thrillers." His Darwinia won Canada's Aurora Award; his most recent novel, The Chronoliths, won the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Now he tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a mysterious but hopeful universe.
At Blind Lake, a large federal research installation in northern Minnesota, scientists are using a technology they barely understand to watch everyday life in a city of lobster like aliens upon a distant planet. They can't contact the aliens in any way or understand their language. All they can do is watch.
Then, without warning, a military cordon is imposed on the Blind Lake site. All communication with the outside world is cut off. Food and other vital supplies are delivered by remote control. No one knows why.
The scientists, nevertheless, go on with their research. Among them are Nerissa Iverson and the man she recently divorced, Raymond Scutter. They continue to work together despite the difficult conditions and the bitterness between them. Ray believes their efforts are doomed; that culture is arbitrary, and the aliens will forever be an enigma.
Nerissa believes there is a commonality of sentient thought, and that our failure to understand is our own ignorance, not a fact of nature. The behavior of the alien she has been tracking seems to be developing an elusive narrative logic--and she comes to feel that the alien is somehow, impossibly, aware of the project's observers.
But her time is running out. Ray is turning hostile, stalking her. The military cordon is tightening. Understanding had better come soon....
Blind Lake is a 2004 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.
A space opera is what science fiction readers call an adventure in outer space and on alien planets. But a space opera could also be an opera, a musical work, that originated in outer space...
Jack Vance's unique novel SPACE OPERA fits both definitions marvelously! Because it starts with the mysterious opera company from the equally mysterious planet Rlaru that arrives on Earth to astonish and infuriate music-lovers - and then disappears without trace!
And when Roger Wool's wealthy aunt determined to reciprocate by bringing an Earthly operatic team into space and to the unknown world Rlaru, there unwinds a complex and surprising space opera of the first kind ...filled with enigmatic aliens, weird worlds, and all the special color and cunning that is the hallmark of the best Jack Vance.
In the aftermath of an atomic war, a new international movement of pacifism has arisen. Multitudes of young men have chosen to curb their aggressive instincts through voluntary amputation - disarmament in its most literal sense.
Those who have undergone this procedure are highly esteemed in the new society. But they have a problem - their prosthetics require a rare metal to function, and international tensions are rising over which countries get the right to mine it . . .
In the early hours before dawn, a small Michigan town vanishes from the face of the earth. That morning the men and women of Two Rivers wake up in a world strangely different from their own - a world of curfews, food rationing and secret police.
Something has gone terribly wrong in Two Rivers, something that has to do with the mysterious government facility on the outskirts of the town. For schoolteacher Dexter Graham, who has lost his family and has nothing left he values . . . for twelve-year-old Clifford Stockton, driven by a child's curiosity and courage . . . for Evelyn Woodward, torn between obedience to the state and loyalty to her friends . . . and for physicist Howard Poole, haunted by the memory of his brilliant, enigmatic uncle, the only way to escape the nightmare is to journey deeper into fear.
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 system. To do so, he must first interpret the story of Emphyrio, an ancient hero of Halman legend.
All Jack Vance titles in the SF Gateway use the author's preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance's admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.
It is the 22nd century. Interstellar travel is possible, but colossally expensive, so humankind's efforts are focused on the only nearby Earth-like world. Isis is rich with plant and animal life, but every molecule of it is spectacularly toxic to humans. The whole planet is a permanent Hot Zone.
Zoe Fisher was born to explore Isis. Literally. She has been cloned and genetically engineered to face its terrors. But there are secrets implanted within her that not even she suspects - and the planet itself contains revelations that will change our understanding of life in the universe.
At the heart of the wildwood lies a place of mystery and legend, from which few return and none emerged unchanged: Lavondyss . . . the ultimate realm, the source of all myth.
When Harry Keeton disappeared into Ryhope Wood, his sister Tallis was just an infant. Now, thirteen years old, she hears him whispering to her from the Otherworld. He is in danger. He needs her help. Using masks, magic and clues left by her grandfather, she finds a way to enter the primitive forest and begin her search. Eventually she comes to Lavondyss itself, a realm both beautiful and deadly, a place in which she is changed forever . . .
Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood won the World Fantasy Award and is among the most praised post-war novels of the fantastical. In this haunting sequel, Lavondyss, we are returned to the Wildwood and the mythos that Holdstock has made his own.
Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1989.
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth.
Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.
Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist specializing in near-death experiences. She is about to get help from a new doctor with the power to give her the chance to get as close to death as anyone can.
A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Joanna's first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined - so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why that place is so hauntingly familiar.
But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.
Yet just when Joanna thinks she understands, she's in for the biggest surprise of all - a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page.
World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser weapon,
he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.
Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard's world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit - and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted ...
In the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late twenty-first century, tedium can be endured through the use of the drug Can-D, which enables the user to inhabit a shared illusory world.
But when industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z, which is far more potent than Can-D. But could the permanent state of drugged illusion it induces be part of something much more sinister?
Jack Mustaine discovers Grail, Louisiana, when the BMW he "borrowed" to leave L.A. breaks down outside the town. The sheriff nearly scams him out of the car before Grail's top dog, Joe Dill, comes to the rescue. Then Dill brings Jack to Le Bon Chance saloon, where Jack starts wondering whether he was rescued. After luscious Vida Dumars takes him home, he starts doubting his sanity. Vida's a prodigious lay, and Jack thinks he's in love, but tomorrow is St. John's Eve, when the new Midsummer Queen will be chosen by the Good Gray Man, and outgoing MQ Vida has to pass the scepter to a 10-year-old. Plenty of people tell Jack to get Vida out of town beforehand, and he wants to, but . . .
In Aztechs, Shepard returns to the near-future setting of his Nebula Award-winning story, "R&R" (later part of Life During Wartime). El Rayo, the bustling border community grown up along the electrified fence along the U.S./Mexican border, is home to Eddie Poe, who earns his living by providing security. The men he hires are AWOL U.S. soldiers. AZTECH, a mysterious high-tech firm rumored to be run by a renegade U.S. military AI named Montezuma, hires Eddie and his bodyguards to join AZTECH representative Montezuma 2 ("Z2") for a meeting with the Carbonell cartel. When the meeting goes sour and Z2 is badly wounded, one of the soldiers lobs a pocket nuke to cover their escape, and Eddie realizes he's no longer in control...
Jason Taverner has a glittering TV career, millions of fans, great wealth and something close to eternal youth. He is one of a handful of brilliant, beautiful people, the product of top-secret government experiments forty years earlier. But suddenly, all records of him vanish. He becomes a man with no identity, in a police state where everyone us closely monitored. Can he ever be rich and famous again? Or was that life just an illusion?
Triton, the outermost moon of Neptune, is a world of absolute freedom. A world where every wish can be fulfilled. But for Bron Helstrom, one of society's elite, life has lost its meaning.
In a world of endless possibilities, Bron begins an odyssey to find the object of his elusive desire. An odyssey that will take him to earth, involve him in political intrigue and transform him completely from the man he once was.
