Penguin Science Fiction

'One of Japan's most venerated writers' David Mitchell

In this unnerving fable from one of Japan's greatest novelists, a recluse known as 'Mole' retreats to a vast underground bunker, only to find that strange guests, booby traps and a giant toilet may prove even greater obstacles than nuclear disaster.

'As is true of Poe and Kafka, Abe creates an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading, on and on' New Yorker

'Abe's depiction of the deadly game of survival is hilarious but at the same time leaves us with a chilling sense of apprehension about the brave new world that awaits us' Los Angeles Times

'A liberating and lacerating critique of American racial madness, capitalism and white superiority ... Schuyler's wild, misanthropic, take-no-prisoners satire of American life seems more relevant than ever ... Afrofuturist before such a term existed' New York Review of Books

Telling the extraordinary story of a mysterious process that can turn black skin white in 1930s America, Black No More is a pioneering and caustic work of Black speculative fiction from one of the great Harlem Renaissance authors.

'A clever and biting satire' Isabel Wilkerson, The New York Times Book Review

'No one is safe from Schuyler's biting mockery' The New York Times

'Delany's works have become essential to the history of science fiction' New Yorker

Samuel Delany is one of the most radical and influential science fiction writers of our age, who reinvented the genre with his fearless explorations of race, class and gender. Driftglass is the definitive volume of his stories, featuring neutered space travellers, telepathy, Hells Angels and genetically modified amphibious workers.

'Delany's books interweave science fiction with histories of race, sexuality and control. In so doing, he gives readers fiction that reflects and explores the social truths of our world' The New York Times

'There is nothing else quite like Ice' Doris Lessing

Set in a frozen world that is gradually being devastated by ever-encroaching ice, Anna Kavan's masterwork follows one man's pursuit of a mysterious silver-haired girl to the ends of the earth; to the end of everything.

'A brutal novel of a frozen post-nuclear dystopia. Just the most magnificent book ... hugely enigmatic, a genuine novel of the unconscious and a masterpiece' Frank Tallis, Guardian

'Few novelists match the intensity of her vision' J. G. Ballard

'She is De Quincey's heir and Kafka's sister' Brian Aldiss

'Revelatory. Harry Harrison's novel about Earth on the edge of disaster is both bracing and cathartic ... impressively prescient' Guardian

The planet's population has exploded and resources are stretched to breaking point. And, in a sweltering, overcrowded New York City of 35 million desperate inhabitants, a police detective must try to solve a murder. The basis of the cult film Soylent Green, this eerily prophetic novel is a nightmarish vision of a world in meltdown.

'A cautionary tale of what might happen if American consumption goes unchecked' Los Angeles Times

'An author with a serious purpose and a subversive wit' Christopher Priest

The first English-language publication of one of the greatest Polish science fiction novels of all time

'We have given you life ... so that you could discover a fraction of the great secret.'

Is BER-66 a human or a robot? His controllers, known as 'the Mechanism,' tell him he is a living machine, programmed to gather information on the inhabitants of the strange underground world he finds himself in. But as he penetrates its tunnels and locked rooms, encountering mysterious doppelgangers and a petrified city, he comes closer to the truth of his existence. Considered one of the most important Polish science fiction novels of all time, Robot is a haunting philosophical enquiry into the nature of our reality and our place in the universe.

'An instant classic which catapulted Snerg to the rank of Poland's best sf authors' Science Fiction Encyclopedia

'A prodigious novel ... Stapledon's literary imagination was boundless' Jorge Luis Borges

A lasting influence on successive generations of science fiction writers and on the physicist Freeman Dyson, this poetic, philosophical tale of one man's unexpected voyage through the universe is imbued with a sense of mystery and vast cosmic loneliness.

'The most wonderful novel I have ever read ... Star Maker remains light years ahead' Brian Aldiss

'Probably the most powerful work of imagination ever written' Arthur C. Clarke

'A unique genius' Doris Lessing

'One of the most creative thinkers of our time' Greg Bear

'The greatest entertainer ever produced by science fiction' J. G. Ballard

These surreal, elegantly witty tales from one of the most esteemed writers of science fiction encompass indignant aliens, stranded space explorers, shapeshifters, a company that manufactures designer planets and a deadly hunting game in far-future New York.

'Robert Sheckley is one of the great funny writers' Douglas Adams

'A writer not quite like any other whose forte is his own brand of strange and wonderful humour' The New York Times

'Genuinely funny SF' Neil Gaiman

'Extraordinary' Philip Pullman

Following one man's journey from earth to an alien landscape of ethereal beauty and existential terror, A Voyage to Arcturus is a profound questioning of the nature of evil. Dreamlike and philosophical, this landmark cult novel has influenced generations of writers.

'That shattering, intolerable and irresistible work' C. S. Lewis

'A Nietzschean Pilgrim's Progress ... Lindsay's engrossing book, a mixture of metaphysics and surreal dream-quest, stands as one of the great originals' Guardian

'Tiptree's narratives of alien worlds and alienation make up one of science fiction's most vivid and influential bodies of work' The New York Times

This landmark collection of short stories shows the feminist pioneer James Tiptree Jr. at her most inventive and daring. Here a fake girl becomes a living advertisement, women choose alien invaders over the men of Earth, a creature discovers that love means death and a pandemic engulfs the planet.

'Feminist dystopian fiction owes just as much to this woman - who wrote as a man - as Margaret Atwood' Vox

'Vonnegut looked the world straight in the eye and never flinched' J. G. Ballard

This bitterly funny Cold War satire on the end of the world expresses our deepest fears of Armageddon, and has become a counter-culture classic.

'A satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion' Jay McInerney

'The closest thing we had to a Voltaire' Tom Wolfe

'The time to read Vonnegut is just when you begin to suspect that the world is not what it appears to be. He is not only entertaining, he is electrocuting' The New York Times

The master of weird fiction, H. P. Lovecraft combines cosmic fantasy with creeping horror in these three tales of malevolent alien forces, body-switching and travel across the space-time continuum.

'Evil, in Lovecraft, is universal, pervasive' Michael Chabon

'His prescience and novelty seem more and more remarkable ... shows a deeply modern horror at the universe' Guardian

'A unique and visionary world of wonder, terror and delirium' Clive Barker

'A giant of twentieth-century science fiction' Guardian

One of the world's most beloved science fiction writers, Stanislaw Lem was famed for his wryly comic, outlandish imaginings of the relationship between humans and technology. In this playful cosmic fantasia, two 'constructors' compete to dream up ever-more ingenious inventions in a universe beyond reality.

'A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age, who plays with every concept of philosophy and physics' The New York Times

'Hilarious SF satire. Douglas Adams said it was the only thing like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, although written ten years earlier. It's wonderful' Neil Gaiman

This madcap cosmic farce relates the adventures of the hapless human Carmody, as he attempts to make his way home to Earth after winning the grand prize in the Intergalactic Sweepstake, encountering parallel worlds, incompetent bureaucrats and talking dinosaurs on the way.

'The greatest entertainer ever produced by science fiction ... a feast of wit and intelligence' J. G. Ballard

The book that influenced writers from Carl Sagan to Stephen Hawking, Flatland is set in a two-dimensional world where life exists only in lines and shapes - until one of its inhabitants, 'A. Square', has his perspective transformed forever. This brilliantly eccentric classic is an invitation to see beyond our own reality.

'At once a playful brainteaser about geometry, a pointed satire of Victorian manners - and a strangely compelling argument about the greatest mysteries of the Universe' Wall Street Journal

'Flatland could lead to very profound thought about our Universe and ourselves' Isaac Asimov

In a distant universe, since the beginning of time, workers have spent their lives weaving intricate carpets from the hair of women and girls. But why? Andreas Eschbach's mysterious, poignant space opera explores the absurdity of work and of life itself.

'A novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions through the working out of an intricate and ultimately satisfying plot, with echoes of Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Isaac Asimov' The New York Times Book Review