Science fiction books

The Scarlet Plague

Jack London

Jack London’s opening thrusts the reader into a stark, post‑apocalyptic landscape where a crumbling mono‑rail…

Etidorhpa; or, The End of Earth. The Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of a Remarkable Journey

John Uri Lloyd

Etidorhpa presents itself as a hybrid of speculative science, fantasy, and occult intrigue, a product of its…

Ask a Foolish Question

Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley’s Ask a Foolish Question is a collection of speculative short stories that explores the…

The right to read = $b Le droit de lire

Richard Stallman

The piece is a speculative short story that folds science‑fiction tropes into a near‑future cautionary tale…

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth

H. G. Wells

The work is a speculative science‑fiction tale set in the late‑nineteenth‑century world of academic research.

Piper in the Woods

Philip K. Dick

The story opens as a routine military inquiry turns surreal on a newly‑established asteroid outpost.

Time Enough at Last

Lyn Venable

This story is a science‑fiction short piece that follows Henry Bemis, a teller whose greatest wish is simply…

At the Earth's Core

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Burroughs’s At the Earth’s Core is a hybrid of science‑fiction, fantasy adventure and speculative travel, set…

Voyages to the Moon and the Sun

Cyrano de Bergerac

The work is a 17th‑century French satire that blends speculative science‑fiction with the flamboyant…

The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World

Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of

The work is a seventeenth‑century speculative narrative that blends romance, philosophy, and outright…

The Stranger

Gordon R. Dickson

The story opens on a remote, unnamed world in the Buckhorn Cluster, where the mining ship Emerald Girl,…

When the Sleeper Wakes

H. G. Wells

The novel opens with a vivid encounter on a rugged Cornish coast, where the young artist Mr Isbister…

Triplanetary

E. E. Smith

This is a science‑fiction saga that begins with a sweeping cosmological premise: two galaxies pass through…

The Mysterious Island

Jules Verne

Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island is a science‑fiction adventure that begins with a dramatic, almost…

The colour out of space

H. P. Lovecraft

The opening places the tale squarely in the realms of early twentieth‑century science‑fiction horror,…

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

Jules Verne

Ce roman de Jules Verne s’inscrit dans le genre de la science‑fiction maritime, où l’aventure naît d’un…

The Poison Belt

Arthur Conan Doyle

The story opens as a first‑person narrator, a newspaper reporter named Malone, recounts a recent expedition…

Pellucidar

Edgar Rice Burroughs

The work is a science‑fiction adventure that begins with a self‑referential letter from a desert‑traveling…

A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future

John Jacob Astor

The work is a speculative romance set in the far‑future, blending scientific imagination with a narrative of…

Skylark Three

E. E. Smith

Skylark Three is a 1930s science‑fiction adventure that picks up the saga of the original Skylark of Space.

A Pail of Air

Fritz Leiber

A short‑story collection by Fritz Leiber, A Pail of Air places its first tale in a frozen, sunless world…

The Cosmic Computer

H. Beam Piper

The Cosmic Computer is a mid‑century science‑fiction adventure that opens with Conn Maxwell, a Terran…

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Cory Doctorow

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a science‑fiction tale that folds the glitter of Walt Disney World into…

The Big Trip Up Yonder

Kurt Vonnegut

The piece is a science‑fiction short story that opens in a cramped, over‑populated future apartment where a…