The Greatest Speculative-Fiction Authors of All Time
Discover the greatest speculative-fiction authors of all time and their iconic works. Explore masterpieces from legendary writers who shaped sci-fi, fantasy, and beyond. Dive into timeless stories now!
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Collected Fictions
by Jorge Luis Borges
For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called “the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century” collected in a single volume “An event, and cause for celebration.”—The New York Times A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story—from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Memory—Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself. Playfully experimenting with ostensibly subliterary genres, he took the detective story and turned it into metaphysics; he took fantasy writing and made it, with its questioning and reinventing of everyday reality, central to the craft of fiction; he took the literary essay and put it to use reviewing wholly imaginary books. Bringing together for the first time in English all of Borges’s magical stories, and all of them newly rendered into English in brilliant translations by Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions is the perfect one-volume compendium for all who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master’s work for all who have yet to discover this singular genius. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Figures of Earth
by James Branch Cabell
A tale of the imaginary land of Poictesme, where chivalry and gallantry live on.
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Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
In Kublai Khan's garden, at sunset, the young Marco Polo diverts the aged emperor from his obsession with the impending end of his empire with tales of countless cities past, present, and future.
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The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (The Annotated Books)
by Lewis Carroll
Presents an annotated version of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass," including recently discovered John Tenniel illustrations and newly added Martin Gardner annotations.
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The King of Elfland's Daughter
by Lord Dunsany
“No amount of mere description can convey more than a fraction of Lord Dunsany's pervasive charm.”—H.P. Lovecraft With an introduction by Neil Gaiman The poetic style and sweeping grandeur of The King of Elfland's Daughter has made it one of the most beloved fantasy novels of our time, a masterpiece that influenced some of the greatest contemporary fantasists. The heartbreaking story of a marriage between a mortal man and an elf princess is a masterful tapestry of the fairy tale following the “happily ever after.” Praise for The King of Elfland's Daughter “We find that he has but tranfigured with beauty the common sights of the world.”—William Butler Yeats “I shall indeed be happy if this volume contributes to the rediscovery of one of the greatest writers of this century.”—Arthur C. Clarke “Del Rey is to be thanked for bringing these works back into print. No one can understand modern fantasy without understanding its roots, and Lord Dunsany's work is immediately significant as well as enjoyable even today.”—Katharine Kerr “A fantasy novel in a class with the Tolkien books.”—L. Sprague de Camp
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The Worm Ouroboros
by Eric RĂĽcker Eddison
THERE was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wasdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time. Lily and rose and larkspur bloomed in the borders, and begonias with blossoms big as saucers, red and white and pink and lemon-colour, in the beds before the porch. Climbing roses, honeysuckle, clematis, and the scarlet flame-flower scrambled up the walls. Thick woods were on every side without the garden, with a gap north-eastward opening on the desolate lake and the great fells beyond it: Gable rearing his crag-bound head against the sky from behind the straight clean outline of the Screes. Cool long shadows stole across the tennis lawn. The air was golden. Doves murmured in the trees; two chaffinches played on the near post of the net; a little water-wagtail scurried along the path. A French window stood open to the garden, showing darkly a dining-room panelled with old oak, its Jacobean table bright with flowers and silver and cut glass and Wedgwood dishes heaped with fruit: greengages, peaches, and green muscat grapes. Lessingham lay back in a hammock-chair watching through the blue smoke of an after-dinner cigar the warm light on the Gloire de Dijon roses that clustered about the bedroom window overhead. He had her hand in his. This was their House. "Should we finish that chapter of Njal?" she said. She took the heavy volume with its faded green cover, and read: "He went out on the night of the Lord's day, when nine weeks were still to winter; he heard a great crash, so that he thought both heaven and earth shook. Then he looked into the west airt, and he thought he saw thereabouts a ring of fiery hue, and within the ring a man on a gray horse. He passed quickly by him, and rode hard. He had a flaming firebrand in his hand, and he rode so close to him that he could see him plainly. He was black as pitch, and he sung this song with a mighty voice--" Here I ride swift steed. His flank flecked with rime. Rain from his mane drips. Horse mighty for harm; Flames flare at each end. Gall glows in the midst. So fares it with Flosi's redes As this flaming brand flies; And so fares it with Flosi's redes As this flaming brand flies. "'Then he thought he hurled the firebrand east towards the fells before him, and such a blaze of fire leapt up to meet it that he could not see the fells for the blaze. It seemed as though that man rode east among the flames and vanished there. "'After that he went to his bed, and was senseless for a long time, but at last he came to himself. He bore in mind all that had happened, and told his father, but he bade him tell it to Hjallti Skeggi's son. So he went and told Hjallti, but he said he had seen "the Wolf's Ride, and that comes ever before great tidings."'" They were silent awhile; then Lessingham said suddenly, "Do you mind if we sleep in the east wing to-night?" "What, in the Lotus Room?" "Yes." "I'm too much of a lazy-bones to-night, dear," she answered.
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The Lord of the Rings
by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
An epic depicting the Great War of the Ring, a struggle between good and evil in Middle-Earth, in which the tiny Hobbits play a key role.
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The Demon Princes, Vol. 1
by Jack Vance
Kirth Gersen, his family and home planet destroyed in the Mount Pleasant Massacre, sets out on a mission of revenge to find and eliminate the five Demon Princes responsible.
