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"As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I...
2) Herland
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Herland (1915) is a utopian novel by American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland was originally published in The Forerunner, a monthly magazine edited by Gilman, before going out of print for the next several decades. The novel was republished with an influential introduction by scholar Ann J. Lane in 1979 and has since been recognized as an important work of science fiction written by a leading feminist of the early twentieth century.
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Soon after the American Civil War, Confederate soldier John Carter joins the gold rush in Arizona. After striking a vein of gold, Carter runs into trouble with the natives of the area. In attempts to evade their pursuit, Carter hides in a cave, unaware of its magical properties. Mysteriously, Carter is transported to Mars, which the planet inhabitants call "Barsoom". When Carter discovers that the gravity difference between Mars and Earth has granted...
4) Erewhon
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A utopian classic with a rich legacy–influencing authors from Huxley to Herbert and beyond–Erewhon satirizes Victorian society with biting insight still relevant today.
When Higgs, a young traveler, stumbles upon the beautiful land of Erewhon, he soon discovers that its seemingly ideal culture is founded upon bizarre, unsettling beliefs. Crime is a sickness, while sickness is a crime; the greatest scholarly achievement is unreason, and all machines...
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Jack London was born into abject poverty in the slums of San Francisco during the winter of 1876. His writing was to reflect the hard life he lived, perpetually chronicling men facing the wild as he did throughout his life. After his eighth grade year, poverty forced London to leave school. This did not stop him, as he furthered his literary knowledge and skill at the Oakland Public Library, borrowing books and educating himself. London faced great...
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There's a heavy price to pay for the manipulation of nature in this novel from the revered author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. It begins as a boon for mankind-the creation of the substance Herakleophorbia IV. When fed to farm animals, it causes them to grow to enormous size. But when it is accidentally allowed to enter the local food chain, the consequences prove monstrous: Human children exposed to it grow into giants, reaching...
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A Modern Utopia is a novel by H. G. Wells. Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative structure A Modern Utopia has been called "not so much a modern as a postmodern utopia." The novel is best known for its notion that a voluntary order of nobility known as the Samurai could effectively rule a "kinetic and not static" world state so as to solve "the problem of combining progress with political stability." To this planet "out beyond...
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One of the most literary and readable of utopian novels, News from Nowhere chronicles the impressions of a nineteenth-century visitor to the twenty-second century, who finds England transformed into a socialist paradise. Morris' idyllic society echoes themes from the writings of Ruskin and Marx but forms a distinctive expression of the author's own egalitarian views. A distillation of Morris' mature reflections on politics, art and society, this work...
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The Riddle of the Sands is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television. The novel "owes a lot to the wonderful adventure novels of writers like Rider Haggard, that were a staple of Victorian Britain". It was a...
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The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) is a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Written during a period of increased interest in Egyptology across Europe, The Jewel of Seven Stars helped to establish the Irish master of Gothic horror's reputation as a leading writer of the early twentieth-century.
In the middle of the night, a young lawyer is roused from sleep by Margaret Trelawny. At her urgent request, he accompanies her to the house of her father, Abel...
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In his previous science-fiction novel, Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon envisioned 2 billion years of history, in which modern humans represented the first and most primitive of 18 increasingly advanced species. In this companion piece, a being from the remote future travels back to the 20th century to inhabit the consciousness of an Englishman named Paul. From inside his subject's mind, the super-intelligent mega-human observes Paul's childhood,...
12) We
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We (1924) is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Written between 1920 and 1921, the novel reflects its author's growing disillusionment with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War. Smuggled out of the country, the manuscript was translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg and published in New York in 1924.
In a series of diary entries, D-503, an engineer in charge of building the spaceship Integral, reflects on life...
13) The Last Man
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The Last Man (1826) is a dystopian novel by Mary Shelley. Dedicated to the recently deceased Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, The Last Man was controversial upon publication and was immediately suppressed by British authorities. Resurrected by dedicated critics and readers, the novel is now recognized as a pioneering work of science fiction and as the first work of dystopian literature to be published in English.
The ambitious and semi-autobiographical...
14) Lord Jim
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Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the Hadj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed....
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The Mortzestus is reputed to be haunted but the crew dismisses the rumors as preposterous - at first. Two weeks out of port the rigging suddenly goes slack, a ghostly form arises from the sea, and shadows thicken around the vessel. The frightened sailors, convinced that supernatural powers are afoot, plot mutiny and demand to be set ashore. But a dense mist descends around the ship, threatening to swallow the craft and its men without a trace. The...
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Blast off with "From the Earth to the Moon," a visionary science fiction masterpiece from the iconic Jules Verne. This groundbreaking novel spins an extraordinary tale of the daring Baltimore Gun Club, a post-Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, who devise an audacious plan to catapult a spaceship to the moon. In the era before actual lunar expeditions, Verne astonishingly predicts technological advancements and the thrill of space exploration,...
17) Twistor
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Research scientist David Harrison happens upon the "twistor effect," a phenomenon that opens doors into countless alternate universes. The discovery's potential for unlimited power draws the attention of industrial spies and corporate killers, driving Dr. Harrison to seek sanctuary in a mysterious shadow world-a place of both wonder and danger, with no certain way out. Written by a professional physicist, this gripping novel of hard science fiction...
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The celebrated medievalist William Morris was among the first writers to combine supernatural elements with world building. He created the precursors of modern fantasy fiction, and both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien acknowledged his influence on their writing. In his final novel, Morris draws upon Icelandic lore to tell a tale of two lovers, Osberne and Elfhild, separated by a broad river. When Elfhild vanishes from the riverbank, Osberne takes...
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First published in 1907, "Lord of the World" is the dystopian work of science fiction by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson which depicts the rise of the Anti-Christ and the ensuing end of the world. The novel begins with a prologue set in early 21st century London in which the history of the last century is described. A global rise of Marxism has divided the world up into three power-blocs; a European Confederation of Marxist one-party states, an Eastern...
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Thanks to his father's genetic experiments, Hugo Danner is born with superhuman levels of strength, speed, and intelligence. Hugo feels compelled to conceal his gifts from a suspicious and uncomprehending world, but he doesn't take on an identity as a costumed crusader. Instead, his struggles to find a place in society that will accommodate his extraordinary skills lead to a checkered career as a boardwalk strongman, Foreign Legionnaire, politician,...
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