Speculative Fiction and Fantasy: Speculative Fiction

In a world where Richard Nixon was never impeached, superheroes were outlawed, with the exception of Dr. Manhattan, a human atomically powered and employed by the government. When Dr. Manhattan disappears, it brings all the "normal" superheroes out of hiding, and humanity must face the ways that superpowered individuals could truly change the world as we know it.

During the twenty-second century, a space probe's investigation of a mysterious, cylindrical asteroid brings man into contact with an extra-galactic civilization.

December, 1999, the dawn of the millennium. A team of international scientists is poised for the most fantastic adventure in human history. After years of scanning the galaxy for signs of somebody or something else, this team believes they've found a message from an intelligent source, and they travel deep into space to meet it. Who or what is out there?

This lunatic space extravaganza tells of the worst Thursday ever, when Earth was demolished to make way for a new hyperspacial expressway.

In a parody of Victorian society, A. Square meets a tragic fate when he dares to inform the inhabitants of his two-dimensional universe that there is a third and fourth dimension.

Future space fantasy concerning a time when the human race has reached a point of intellectual stagnation and receives the help of a space-age Messiah and prophet.

The first and (according to some) greatest portrayal of time travel.

In the year 2024 Vice President Charlie Haskell is at the new American Moonbase for its opening ceremonies when an amateur astronomer discovers a gigantic new comet headed straight towards the Moon. With only five days until impact evacuation of all personnel seems improbable and the panic on Earth is of epic proportions.

On a wager, the eccentric English gentleman Phileas Fogg accepts a challenge to circle the globe in eighty days. Follow Phileas and his faithful valet Passepartout, in this classic fantastic adventure.

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South.

Child-hero Ender Wiggin must fight a desperate battle against a deadly alien race if mankind is to survive.

In a constant struggle against oppression, a group of rabbits search for peaceful co-existence. Chronicles the adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.

Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom.

The classic science fiction novel that inspired Stanley Kubrick's immortal 1968 film and changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man ventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other. This allegory about humanity's exploration of their universe, and the universe's reaction to humanity lives on as a hallmark achievement in storytelling. The story follows the Discovery One and its crew as they embark on a mission to Saturn. Controlling the Discovery One is the HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent supercomputer that manages the functions of all systems of the spacecraft. A masterful feat of human engineering, HAL is capable of the highest level of cognitive functioning that rivals--and perhaps threatens--the human mind. Grappling with space exploration, the perils of technology, and the limits of human power, 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to be an enduring classic of cinematic scope. 

The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city-intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began. But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a malaise settles over the human race....

Charlie Gordon, a youth with limited mental capabilities, along with a laboratory rat named Algernon become the joint objects of a scientific alteration to see if Charlie can become "normal."

While the totalitarianism that provoked George Orwell into writing 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' seems to be passing into oblivion, his harrowing, cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate, and its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade.

Psychohistorian Seldon senses the coming crash of the galactic empire, prepares a chosen corps of his best students to colonize a remote planet where war cannot impede his work. The story of this colony's survival and eventual command of the broken empire sustains the narrative which is- this time-better science than fiction.

Asimov chronicles the development of the robot through a series of interlinked stories: from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future--a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete. Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-read robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world.

In the year 2100, mankind on Earth, settlers in a lunar colony, and aliens from the para-universe (a strange universe parallel in time to our own) face a race against time as they try to prevent the total destruction of the Earth by the invention of an Inter-Universe Electron Pump.

A young writer decides to interview the children of a scientist primarily responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb.

SLAUGHTERHOUSEFIVE is a captivating science fiction story. Scenes from World War II alternate with Billy's life on exhibition in a kind of zoo on the distant planet Tralfamadore. What little solace or pleasure Billy experiences comes at the hands of the Tralfamadorians, whose calmly fatalistic philosophy seems wise when compared to normal human stupidity and irrationality.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale has become one of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules. Like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid's Tale has endured not only as a literary landmark but as a warning of a possible future that is still chillingly relevant.

A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator. Includes illustrated notes throughout the text explaining the historical background of the story.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission of the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse.

Days before his release from prison, Shadow learns that his wife has been killed in an accident. On the plane ride back home for the funeral, he meets Mr. Wednesday, who offers Shadow a job. Shadow accepts but soon discovers that Mr. Wednesday is far more dangerous than he could ever have imagined.

A satire on totalitarianism in which farm animals overthrow their human owner and set up their own government.

'The most outr#65533; science fiction writer of the 20th century has finally entered the canon,'exclaimed Wired Magazine upon The Library of America's May 2007 publication of Philip K. Dick- Four Novels of the 1960s, edited by Jonathan Lethem. Now comes a companion volume collecting five novels that offer a breathtaking overview of the range of this science-fiction master. Philip K. Dick (1928-82) was a writer of incandescent imagination who made and unmade world-systems with ferocious rapidity and unbridled speculative daring. 'The floor joists of the universe,' he once wrote, 'are visible in my novels.' Martian Time-Slip (1964) unfolds on a parched and thinly colonized Red Planet where schizophrenia is a contagion and the unscrupulous seek to profit from a troubled child's time-fracturing visions. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965) chronicles the deeply-interwoven stories of a multi-racial community of survivors, including the scientist who may have been responsible for World War III. Famous, among other reasons, for a therapy session involving a talking taxicab, Now Wait for Last Year (1966) explores the effects of JJ-180, a hallucinogen that alters not only perception, but reality. In Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), a television star seeks to unravel a mystery that has left him stripped of his identity. A Scanner Darkly (1977), the basis for the 2006 film, envisions a drug-addled world in which a narcotics officer's tenuous hold on sanity is strained by his new surveillance assignment- himself. Mixing metaphysics and madness, phantasmagoric visions of a post-nuclear world and invading extraterrestrial authoritarians, and all-too-real evocations of the drugged-out America of the 70s, Dick's work remains exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure.

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit.

Wanderer meets a tattooed man whose images foretell the future, leaving a space to preview the destiny of the viewer.

A nonhuman visitor brings into doubt the values and self-evident truths of Western society.

The classic novel follows the struggle of the Monks of the Order of Saint Leibowitz to preserve the remnants of civilization after a nuclear war and wield them against tyranny.

Case, a burned-out computer whiz, is asked to steal a security code that is locked in the most heavily guarded databank in the solar system, in a new edition of the influential Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Award winner. Reprint.

A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator. Includes illustrated notes throughout the text explaining the historical background of the story.

H.G. Wells' 1897 science fiction novella The Invisible Man tells the story of a scientist named Griffin who theory is this: if the refractive index of a person's body is adjusted to exactly that of air, then his body will not absorb or reflect light and he will become invisible. Griffin subjects himself to a procedure to do this, becoming an invisible man. But he cannot manage to reverse it and become visible once more, resulting in his mental unhinging.

A fanatical socialist falls asleep for two hundred and three years and wakes up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest on his bank accounts, he has become the richest man in the world.

Sixty years after a plague sweeps across the planet, James Howard Smith, one of the few survivors from the pre-plague era, tries to impart the value of knowledge and wisdom to his grandsons

The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic examines the film in a broad context, examining its relationship to the original novel, the PC game, the series of sequels, and the many films influenced by its style and themes.

Four hundred years in the future, the Earth has turned primitive following a nuclear fire that has laid waste to civilization and nature. Though the radiation fall-out has ended, for some unknowable reason every person is born with a twin. Of each pair, one is an Alpha--physically perfect in every way--and the other an Omega--burdened with deformity, small or large.

Returning from a field trip, Isherwood Williams discovers that a mysterious plague has destroyed human civilization during his absence and makes his way to San Francisco, where he finds a few survivors who build a small community, living like their pioneer ancestors. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

A two-headed creature and a large red-furred carnivore are among the members of a party which arrives to explore a mysterious world fabricated in the shape of a ring.

Criticism and interpretation of Ursula Le Guin

Criticism and interpretation of Kurt Vonnegut

Criticism and interpretation of Ray Bradbury