Metropolis is set in 2026 in a technologically advanced city, which is sustained by the existence of an exploited class of laborers who live underground, far away from the gleaming surface world. Freder, the son of one of the city's founders, falls in love with Maria, a girl from the underground. The two worlds are destined to clash and upheaval is inevitable. Can the two lovers survive the coming turmoil. Metropolis the novel was written alongside...

The groundbreaking dystopian novel that inspired 1984 and Brave New World. "The best single work of science fiction yet written." -Ursula K. Le Guin When society has programmed you to sleep . . . How do you wake yourself up? The One State is a world where people are merely numbers, and free will itself is a disease. Most are happy in their role as cogs in a huge machine, controlled by the ever-watchful Benefactor. However,...

"Since I've gone this far, I'll go a bit further and make the paradoxical admission that even us Deathlanders don't really understand our urge to murder. Oh, we have our rationalizations of it, just like everyone has of his ruling passion-we call ourselves junkmen, scavengers, gangrene surgeons, we sometimes believe we're doing the person we kill the ultimate kindness, yes and get slobbery tearful about it afterwards, we sometimes tell ourselves we've...

From the author of Frankenstein comes this apocalyptic tale of a world devastated by plague. Mary Shelley's 1826 roman à clef takes place in the late twenty-first century, as England's last king abdicates and a charmed circle of idealistic political reformers plunges into a maelstrom of war, pestilence, and anarchy. Shelley wrote this gripping novel after the untimely deaths of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their comrade, Lord Byron. She...

First of all, Arthur was a machine. He rode out the missile attack that shattered the United States safe at sea aboard a hospital ship. But when he took to land with two friends - human friends - that's when things got dicey. Because an Artificial Intelligence with his skills could do a lot of work, and quite a few people wanted him. Preferably without his human friends in tow... A classic from the Golden Age of science fiction!

A sleepy little town discovers its memories have become part of the water cycle in Naomi Salman's debut novella, Nothing but the Rain. The rain in Aloisville is never-ending, and no one can remember when it started. There's not much they can remember. With every drop that hits their skin, a bit of memory is washed away. Stay too long in the wet, and you'll lose everything you used to be. By the time Laverne begins keeping a journal, the small town...

A catastrophe has descended upon England. London is now a pestilent swamp, dotted with the ghostly remains of ancient buildings. A giant lake dominates the center of the country, towns have collapsed and given way to forests, and the few scattered survivors have descended into barbarism. Amid the ruins of civilization and a countryside ravaged by warring tribes, a lone hero undertakes a quest to prove himself worthy of his beloved. Characterized by...

First published in 1907, "Lord of the World" is the dystopian work of science fiction by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson which depicts the rise of the Anti-Christ and the ensuing end of the world. The novel begins with a prologue set in early 21st century London in which the history of the last century is described. A global rise of Marxism has divided the world up into three power-blocs; a European Confederation of Marxist one-party states, an Eastern...

The winner of Cuba's prestigious Premio David in 1980, Spiral is another magisterial space opera from the late great science fiction author Agustín de Rojas. Deeply committed to the Revolution, Rojas presents a stunning critique of the Cuban regime under Fidel Castro by inviting the comparison of Spiral's fictional moral universe, one in which Che Guevara's principles of socialism are followed to the letter, with the brutal realities of everyday...

"Dignity is only above the blade of a psychic light blade, and truth is only within the range of a super-heavy purification beam." The chaotic situation has allowed Amber, who traveled into the cosmic battle for supremacy game of Stars, to thoroughly comprehend this quote ...... Humanity, who accidentally gained access to leapfrog technology, quickly branched out across the galaxy like a plague. After centuries of all humanity working hand in hand...