Science Fiction Classics Starter Kit
Discover the best science fiction classics with our starter kit! Explore timeless books from iconic authors that defined the genre. Perfect for new readers and fans alike.
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The Best of John W. Campbell
by John Wood Campbell
Eleven stories of science fiction adventure including The Last Evolution, The Invaders, Elimination, and Out of Night are prefaced by an essay on life in the future
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Slan
by Alfred Elton Van Vogt
After escaping extermination by the humans, young Jommy Cross searches for th meaning of the Slans' great mental superiority.
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The Martian Chronicles
by Ray Bradbury
Man, was a a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in wave... Each wave different, and each wave stronger. The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America's most beloved authors. In a much celebrated literary career that has spanned six decades, he has produced an astonishing body of work: unforgettable novels, including Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes; essays, theatrical works, screenplays and teleplays; The Illustrated Mein, Dandelion Wine, The October Country, and numerous other superb short story collections. But of all the dazzling stars in the vast Bradbury universe, none shines more luminous than these masterful chronicles of Earth's settlement of the fourth world from the sun. Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor-of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn -first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars ... and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights and challenges us with his vision and his heart-starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
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Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
As the Galactic Empire declines, psychohistorian Hari Seldon and his band of psychobiologists form the Foundation, designed to be the nucleus of an eventual ideal universal ruling corporation.
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Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clarke
The inspiration for the Syfy miniseries. Childhoodâs End is one of the defining legacies of Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other groundbreaking works. Since its publication in 1953, this prescient novel about first contact gone wrong has come to be regarded not only as a science fiction classic but as a literary thriller of the highest order. Spaceships have suddenly appeared in the skies above every city on the planet. Inside is an intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior alien race known as the Overlords. At first, their demands seem benevolent: unify Earth, eliminate poverty, end war. But at what cost? To those who resist, itâs clear that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. Has their arrival marked the end of humankind . . . or the beginning? Praise for Childhoodâs End âA first-rate tour de force.ââThe New York Times âFrighteningly logical, believable, and grimly prophetic . . . Clarke is a master.ââLos Angeles Times âThere has been nothing like it for years; partly for the actual invention, but partly because here we meet a modern author who understands that there may be things that have a higher claim on humanity than its own âsurvival.â ââC. S. Lewis âAs a science fiction writer, Clarke has all the essentials.ââJeremy Bernstein, The New Yorker
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Solaris
by StanisĆaw Lem
Kris Kelvin lands on the space station Solaris only to face a cruel miracle.
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Dune
by Frank Herbert
âą DUNE: PART TWO âą THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Directed by Denis Villeneuve, screenplay by Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, based on the novel Dune by Frank Herbert âą Starring TimothĂ©e Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Stephen McKinley Henderson, LĂ©a Seydoux, with Stellan SkarsgĂ„rd, with Charlotte Rampling, and Javier Bardem Frank Herbertâs classic masterpieceâa triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreidesâwho would become known as Muad'Dibâand of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
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Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
âA free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!ââThe New York Times Catâs Cradle is Kurt Vonnegutâs satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planetâs ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Catâs Cradle is one of the twentieth centuryâs most important worksâand Vonnegut at his very best. â[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.ââHarperâs Magazine âOur finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.ââAtlantic Monthly
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The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONâWITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS Ursula K. Le Guinâs groundbreaking work of science fictionâwinner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitantsâ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winterâs inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters... Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.
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Ringworld
by Larry Niven
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel Four travelers come to the ringworld. . . Louis Wu: human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it. Nessus: a trembling coward, a puppeteer with a built-in survival pattern of nonviolence. Except that this particular puppeteer is insane. Teela Brown: human; a wide-eyed youngster with no allegiances, no experience, no abilities. And all the luck in the world. Speaker-To-Animals: kzin; large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. And one of the most savage life-forms known in the galaxy. Why did these disparate individuals come together? How could they possibly function together? And where, in the name of anything sane, were they headed?
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The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
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The Forever War
by Joe Haldeman
"Private William Mandella hadn't wanted to go to war against the Taurans ...."--p. [4] of cover.
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Valis
by Philip K. Dick
Horselover Fat begins receiving what he considers to be divine revelations that imply extraterrestrial forces are interfering in the affairs of the Earth.
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Neuromancer
by William Gibson
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 special twentieth anniversary edition of the influential Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel.
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Blood Music
by Greg Bear
Vergil Ulam has created cellular material that can outperform rats in laboratory tests. When the authorities rule that he has exceeded his authorization, Vergil loses his job, but is determined to take his discovery with him.