In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears, and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed - except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant. The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside....

Twelve stories by science-fiction master Stanislaw Lem, nine of them never before published in English.

These 11 stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award winners, are a blazingly original ode to planet Earth, its pasts, and its futures. Liu's fiction takes the listener to the edge of the universe and the end of time, to meet stranger fates than we could have ever imagined. With a melancholic and keen understanding of human nature, Liu's stories show humanity's attempts to reason, navigate, and above all, survive in a desolate cosmos.

Best-selling science fiction superstars Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle combine their talents with those of Steven Barnes in an extraordinary adventure of humankind’s first outpost in the farthest reaches of space. Light years from Earth, colonists land on a planet they name Avalon. It seems like a paradise—until native creatures savagely attack. It will take every bit of intelligence, courage, and military-style discipline to survive.

In this Hugo Award-winning classic, Enoch Wallace is an ageless hermit, striding across his untended farm as he had done for over a century, still carrying the gun with which he had served in the Civil War. But what his neighbors must never know is that, inside his unchanging house, he meets with a host of unimaginable friends from the farthest stars.

Civilization has fallen. The solar system is blanketed with the automated weapons of ancient wars, engineered plagues, hazardous waste, rogue AI, monsters from outside our dimension, artificial disasters, and nuclear climate change. Every moment of life on Earth is a brutal fight for survival. The people of Sol carry on, but hope is at a premium. They need something more. Someone with a plan, a savior, a hero. What they get is Lily.

After a rough break up, Wyatt moves to New York City, eager to prove himself while working on Wall Street. When he’s asked to visit the father of his ex-girlfriend, a billionaire tycoon, his fate is sealed. The revolutionary company, Nu-En, launches a radical innovation, an energy that will allow every person on the planet access to power. Only it doesn’t perform as anticipated. Harnessing the ocean has consequences, and highly dangerous creatures emerge from the depths. Soon, the Earth is fracturing, and the world will never be the same.

Ships are sinking for no apparent reason, carrying hundreds to a dark underwater grave. Strange fireballs race through the sky above the deepest trenches of the oceans. Something is about to show itself, something terrible and alien, a force capable of causing global catastrophe.

Among the greats of 20th-century horror and fantasy, few names stand above Richard Matheson. Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his 16 Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J. J. Abrams.

Meet Peter LaNague - citizen of the planet Tolive, devotee of the Kyfho philosophy, revolutionary agent provocateur. But LaNague's planning a revolution. One that not only topples the entrenched Outworld Imperium, but fundamentally alters every outworlder’s concept of government as well. To accomplish this he must ally himself with a madman, trust the word of the last of Sol System’s robber barons, make incisive use of the consummate warriors from the planet Flint without letting them run amok, confound at every turn the omnipresent forces of the Imperium, and make it rain money.

Rivka Anoa has a gift and a galactic mandate. She's a lawyer accused of a murder she did commit. She stands ready to accept her fate, even though her victim was a murderer. A second chance appears. Become more than a lawyer. Be one who judges and punishes the guilty. Could she look herself in the mirror after meting out justice? She's about to find out. Rivka heads to space to be the Judge, Jury, & Executioner. Criminals have nowhere to go.

After almost a century of peaceful exploration and colonization of space, the United Earth Space Force stumbles across a shockingly xenophobic alien race that has more and better armed ships and refuses all attempts at contact. As the outgunned Space Force is driven back in battle after battle in what appears to be a war of extermination, one officer experiences precognitive visions that help him blunt the enemy onslaught, but he can't control or predict when they occur.

Ea has always felt like an outsider. As a spinner dolphin who has recently come of age, she's now expected to join in the elaborate rituals that unite her pod. But Ea suffers from a type of deafness that prevents her from mastering the art of spinning. When catastrophe befalls her family, and Ea knows she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave the pod.

Kenna, an aspirational teen guru, wanders destitute across the stars as he tries to achieve his parents' ambition to advise the celestial elite. Everything changes when Kenna wins a free dinner at The Sol Majestic, the galaxy's most renowned restaurant, giving him access to the cosmos's one-percent. His dream is jeopardized, however, when he learns his highly-publicized "free meal" risks putting The Sol Majestic into financial ruin.

A collection of 20 classic short stories by Isaac Asimov, author of the Foundation series, featuring the definitive and only in-print version of “Nightfall”.

After the fall of the American Ayatollahs (as foretold in Stranger in a Strange Land) there is a Second American Revolution; for the first time in human history there is a land with Liberty and Justice for All.

Robot believers at the far end of the galaxy endeavor to create a true religion, but their efforts could be shattered by a shocking revelation. Far in the future, on the remote planet End of Nothing, sentient robots are engaged in a remarkable enterprise. They call their project Vatican-17: an endeavor to create a truly universal religion presided over by a pope, whose extreme godliness and infallible artificial intelligence are fed by telepathic human Listeners who psychically delve into the mysteries of the universe.

Space travel has been abandoned in the 22nd century. It is deemed too dangerous, expensive, and inconvenient - and now the all-powerful Fishhook company holds the monopoly on interstellar exploration for commercial gain. Their secret is the use of "parries", human beings with the remarkable telepathic ability to expand their minds throughout the universe.

Jodi Taylor reads the long-awaited prequel in her Chronicles of St Mary’s series, as Dr Bairstow struggles to set up St Mary’s as we know it in a world still scarred by the ravages of civil war. Ever wondered how it all began? It’s two years since the final victory at the Battersea Barricades. The fighting might be finished, but for Dr Bairstow, just now setting up St Mary's, the struggle is only beginning. How will he assemble his team? From where will his funding come?

His name was Biron Farrill and he was a student at the University of Earth. A native of one of the helpless Nebular Kingdoms, he saw his home world conquered and controlled by the planet Tyrann - a ruthless, barbaric Empire that was building a dynasty of cruelty and domination among the stars. Farrill’s own father had been executed for trying to resist the Tyrann dictatorship and now someone was trying to kill Biron. But why? His only hope for survival lay in fleeing Earth and joining the rebellion that was rumored to be forming somewhere in the Kingdoms.

Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred...unless you're an Explorer. The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed, they are the unwanted, flung to the farthest corners of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, vicious creatures. Out there, there are a thousand different - and terrible - ways to die.

You think you’re struggling to find your place in the universe? Consider poor old Colin Douglass, a terminally ill insurance agent who awakens from centuries in cryogenic freeze to find Earth is a devastated wasteland. Now, he’s being pursued by a homicidal interstellar tourist board, and calculating insurance dividends is as outdated as making stone axes. Sci-fi-hating technophobe Colin seeks a cure for his illness in this strange new galaxy where toilets talk back, and door handles are a long-forgotten relic.

When the leader of the ruthless Technic League calls in a favor, the mild-mannered alchemist Alaeron has no choice but to face a life he thought he'd left behind long ago. Accompanied by his only friend, a street-savvy thief named Skiver, Alaeron must head north into Numeria, a land where brilliant and evil arcanists rule over the local barbarian tribes with technology looted from a crashed spaceship.

In 1994, Mike Mignola created one of the most unique and visually arresting comics series to ever see print: Hellboy. Tens of thousands have followed the exploits of the World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator in comics form and in prose. Now, fans of the comic can enjoy the world of Hellboy as seen through the eyes of some of the brightest creative lights in horror and mystery fiction.

When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!

Physicist Dennis Nuel was the first human to probe the strange realms called anomaly worlds - alternate universes where the laws of science were unpredictably changed. But the world Dennis discovered seemed almost like our own - with one perplexing difference. To his astonishment, he was hailed as a wizard and found himself fighting beside a beautiful woman with strange powers against a mysterious warlord as he struggles to solve the riddle of this baffling world.

Sasha, a young computer programmer from Leningrad, is driving north to meet some friends for a nature vacation. He picks up a couple of hitchhikers who persuade him to take a job at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy. The adventures Sasha has in the largely dysfunctional institute involve all sorts of magical beings - a wish-granting fish, a tree mermaid, a cat who can remember only the beginnings of stories, a dream-interpreting sofa, and many more.

Longtime contributor to the Hellboy mythos Christopher Golden brings together a crew of luminaries including Joe R. Lansdale and China Miéville, cross-genre sensation Barbara Hambly, celebrated mystery writer Ken Bruen, best-selling science-fiction and fantasy novelist Tad Williams, and a bevy of other skilled storytellers eager to spin a tale or two about the world's greatest paranormal detective. Some of the biggest names in horror, mystery, and fantasy come together to pay homage to Mike Mignola's Hellboy!

Earth’s first colony ship finally reaches the target world. The excitement of planetfall is indescribable, but quickly transforms into sick disappointment when they find the atmosphere is a roiling mass of hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, and other deadly poisons. They fly onward, seeking better planets. They find them, but none are ideal. The search goes on for a century, then longer still. As they move farther from Earth, aliens discover the intruding ship, and they begin to investigate humanity. They find our species unacceptable.

The West has been devastated by epidemics, bio-terrorism, war, and famine. Asia has shut its borders to keep the threats at bay, and some with power and influence have already abandoned Earth. Now an escape route a century in the making - the Nomad mission - finally offers hope to a small town and a secret research centre hidden in a rural American backwater. Shrouded in lies and concealed even from the research centre's staff, Nomad is about to fulfil its long-dead founder's vision of preserving the best of humanity to forge a new future. But who decides who's worthy?

The hunt for his killer leads a dead professor of supernatural phenomena into the perilous intrigues of aliens, fairy folk, and time travelers in this classic of science fiction. Until the day he was murdered, Professor Peter Maxwell was a respected faculty member of the College of Supernatural Phenomena. Imagine his chagrin when he turns up at a Wisconsin matter transmission station several weeks later and discovers he's not only dead but unemployed.

Following a conversation with a talking slot machine, Professor Edward Lansing finds himself mysteriously transported to a tavern on a long and empty road. It is immediately obvious to the educator that he is no longer on campus - or even Earth - and that he is not alone. Lansing's new companions - a female engineer, a military officer, a humorless priest, a poetess, and a robot named Jurgens - all hail from separate alternate realities and share Lansing's confusion.

After a night out on the town, Parker Graves returns home to life-threatening danger. The science reporter for the local newspaper barely misses a bear trap sitting on his doorstep. Then, the object transforms into what looks like a bowling ball and rolls off into the night all by itself. He begins to obsess over the question—Who put the trap there? And why? The following day, there is strange news floating around at the newspaper office. Someone with limitless funds is buying up hundreds of homes and businesses, only to close them up and tear them down.

Jenkins was a robot. He was built to be the perfect worker, tireless and uncomplaining. But, quite unexpectedly, he also became a close companion to generation after generation of his owners as the human race matured, moved beyond the confines of its once tiny planet, and eventually changed beyond all recognition.

For decades, The Year's Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after 35 annual collections comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies. In The Very Best of the Best, legendary editor Gardner Dozois selects the finest short stories for this landmark collection, including short fiction from authors such as Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, and any many more.