Collection: Science Fiction

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER

A "breathtaking space opera" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) about a young tea expert who is taken as a political prisoner and recruited to spy on government officials--a role that may empower her to win back her nation's independence--perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor.

The dust may have just settled in the failed war of conquest between the Holy Vaalbaran Empire and the Ominirish Republic, but the last Emperor's surrender means little to a lowly scribe like Enitan. All she wants is to quit her day job and expand her fledgling tea business. But when her lover is assassinated and her sibling is abducted by Imperial soldiers, Enitan abandons her idyllic plans and weaves her tea tray up through the heart of the Vaalbaran capital. There, she learns just how far she is willing to go to exact vengeance, free her sibling, and perhaps even secure her homeland's freedom.

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Vulture, and BBC

An enthralling and original first novel about exile, diaspora, and the impossibility of Black refuge in America and beyond.

In the morning, I received a phone call and was told to board a flight. The arrangements had been made on my behalf. I packed no clothes, because my clothes had been packed for me. A car arrived to pick me up.

A man returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after twenty-six years in America. When he arrives, he finds that he doesn't recognize the country or anyone in it. Thankfully, someone recognizes him, a man who calls him brother--setting him on a quest to find his real brother, who is dying.

In Hangman, Maya Binyam tells the story of that search, and of the phantoms, guides, tricksters, bureaucrats, debtors, taxi drivers, relatives, and riddles that will lead to the truth.

This is an uncommonly assured debut: an existential journey; a tragic farce; a slapstick tragedy; and a strange, and strangely honest, story of one man's stubborn quest to find refuge--in this world and in the world that lies beyond it.

A lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a locked-room thriller

A Twenty-First Century Hamlet.

Hayden Lichfield's life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me...

With the lab on lockdown, Hayden is trapped with four other people--his uncle Charles, lab technician Gabriel Rasmussen, research intern Felicia Xia and their head of security, Felicia's father Paul--one of whom must be the killer. His only sure ally is the lab's resident artificial intelligence, Horatio, who has been his dear friend and companion since its creation. With his world collapsing, Hayden must navigate the building's secrets, uncover his father's lies, and push the boundaries of sanity in the pursuit of revenge.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cosmos and renowned astronomer Carl Sagan's international bestseller about the discovery of an advanced civilization in the depths of space remains the "greatest adventure of all time" (Associated Press).

The future is here...in an adventure of cosmic dimension. When a signal is discovered that seems to come from far beyond our solar system, a multinational team of scientists decides to find the source. What follows is an eye-opening journey out to the stars to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who--or what--is out there? Why are they watching us? And what do they want with us?

One of the best science fiction novels about communication with extraterrestrial intelligent beings, Contact is a "stunning and satisfying" (Los Angeles Times) classic.

Worlds Beyond Time is the definitive visual history of the spaceships, alien landscapes, cryptozoology, and imagined industrial machinery of 1970s paperback sci-fi art and the artists who created these extraordinary images.

In the 1970s, mass-produced, cheaply printed science-fiction novels were thriving. The paper was rough, the titles outrageous, and the cover art astounding. Over the course of the decade, a stable of talented painters, comic-book artists, and designers produced thousands of the most eye-catching book covers to ever grace bookstore shelves (or spinner racks). Curiously, the pieces commissioned for these covers often had very little to do with the contents of the books they were selling, but by leaning heavily on psychedelic imagery, far-out landscapes, and trippy surrealism, the art was able to satisfy the same space race-fueled appetite for the big ideas and brave new worlds that sci-fi writers were boldly pushing forward.

In Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s, Adam Rowe--who has been curating, championing, and resurrecting the best and most obscure art that 1970s sci-fi has to offer on his blog 70s Sci-Fi Art--introduces readers to the biggest names in the genre, including Chris Foss, Peter Elson, Tim White, Jack Gaughan, and Virgil Finlay, as well as their influences. With deep dives into the subject matter that commonly appeared on these covers--spaceships, alien landscapes, fantasy realms, cryptozoology, and heavy machinery--this book is a loving tribute to a unique and robust art form whose legacy lives on both in nostalgic appreciation as well as the retro-chic design of mainstream sci-fi films such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Alien: Covenant, and Thor: Ragnarok.

Includes Color Illustrations

WINNER OF THE 2022 HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
Now a USA Today bestseller!
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2021
Amazon's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2021
Bookpage's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2021
Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee for Best Science Fiction Book of 2021

"[An] all around brilliant space opera, I absolutely love it."--Ann Leckie, on A Memory Called Empire

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.

An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.

In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass--still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire--face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.

Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan's destruction--and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion.

Or it might create something far stranger . . .

Also by Arkady Martine:
A Memory Called Empire

"The Mirror Visitor stands on the same shelf as Harry Potter."--Elle Magazine

In this gripping third volume of the Christelle Dabos's best-selling saga, Ophelia, the mirror-traveling heroine, finds herself on the ark of Babel guarding a secret that may provide a key both to the past and the future.

After two years and seven months biding her time on Anima, her home ark, it is finally time to act, to put what she has discovered in the Book of Farouk to use. Under an assumed identity she travels to Babel, a cosmopolitan and thoroughly modern ark that is the jewel of the universe.

Will Ophelia's talent as a reader suffice to avoid being lured into a deadly trap by her ever more fearful adversaries? Will she ever see Thorn, her betrothed, again?

"Ophelia is...the tiny-voiced powerhouse you can't take your eyes off."--The New York Times

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZEAn astonishing novel about a young microbiologist
investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor, leading her on a
journey that will encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage
of a single human life

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an
escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the
undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the
globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic
ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's
first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we
know about our own beginnings.
Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space
agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic
trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each
piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows
that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining
mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with
her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.
Exploring the natural world with the wonder and reverence we usually reserve
for the stars, In Ascension is a compassionate, deeply inquisitive
epic that reaches outward to confront the greatest questions of existence,
looks inward to illuminate the smallest details of the human heart, and shows
how - no matter how far away we might be and how much we have lost hope - we
will always attempt to return to the people and places we call home.

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom

Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy.

A philandering husband receives a bestial punishment from a wife with her own secrets to keep; a music lover finds herself in a timeline both familiar and as wrong as can be; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars; Emma, the Bovary-like character from one of Suzuki's stories in Terminal Boredom, lands herself in a bizarre romantic pickle.

Wryly anarchic and deeply imaginative, Suzuki was a writer like no other. These eleven stories offer readers the opportunity to delve deeper in this singular writer's work.

In this gripping finale to Christelle Dabos's international best-selling Mirror Visitor saga, the mirror-traveling heroine Ophelia and her husband Thorn discover that the truth they have been seeking has always been hidden behind the mirror.

Ophelia and Thorn, at the center of a great universal game in which the stakes are life and death, arrive at the observatory of the Deviations, an institute shrouded in absolute secrecy and overseen by a sect of mystical scientists who secretly conduct terrifying experiments. There, Ophelia and Thorn hope to put a stop to the destruction and death and bring balance and harmony to their world.

"A hallucinatory marriage of Pride and Prejudice and A Game of Thrones."--Matthew Skelton, author of the Endymion Spring books

The classic science fiction novel that captures and expands on the vision of Stanley Kubrick's immortal film--and changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves.

From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man ventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.

This allegory about humanity's exploration of the universe--and the universe's reaction to humanity--is a hallmark achievement in storytelling that follows the crew of the spacecraft Discovery as they embark on a mission to Saturn. Their vessel is controlled by HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent supercomputer capable of the highest level of cognitive functioning that rivals--and perhaps threatens--the human mind.

Grappling with space exploration, the perils of technology, and the limits of human power, 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to be an enduring classic of cinematic scope.

New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's Red Team Blues is a grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works.

Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.

Martin is a--contain your excitement--self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life.

Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before--and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

Jim Butcher, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dresden Files and the Codex Alera novels, conjures up a new series set in a fantastic world of noble families, steam-powered technology, and magic-wielding warriors...

Since time immemorial, the Spires have sheltered humanity. Within their halls, the ruling aristocratic houses develop scientific marvels, foster trade alliances, and maintain fleets of airships to keep the peace.

Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship Predator. Loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy's shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is damaged in combat, Grimm joins a team of Albion agents on a vital mission in exchange for fully restoring his ship.

And as Grimm undertakes this task, he learns that the conflict between the Spires is merely a premonition of things to come. Humanity's ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more. And death will follow in its wake...

Two years before the events of Stranger Things: Season 4, Eddie Munson--Hellfire Club leader, metalhead, and Hawkins outcast--has one shot to make it big.

Hawkins, Indiana: For most, it's simply another idyllic, manicured all-American town. But for Eddie Munson, it's like living in a perpetual Tomb of Horrors. Luckily, he has only a few more months to survive at Hawkins High. And what is senior year, really, but killing time between Dungeons & Dragons sessions with the Hellfire Club and gigs with his band, Corroded Coffin?

At the worst dive bar in town, Eddie meets Paige, someone who has pulled off a freaking miracle. She escaped Hawkins and built a wickedly cool life for herself working for a record producer in Los Angeles. Not only is she the definition of a badass--with killer taste in music--but she might also be the only person who actually appreciates Eddie as the bard he is instead of as the devil incarnate. But the best thing? She's offering him a chance to make something of himself, and all he needs to do is get her a demo tape of Corroded Coffin's best songs.

Just one problem: Recording costs money. Money Eddie doesn't have. But he's willing to do whatever it takes, even if that means relying on his dad. Al Munson has just stumbled back into Eddie's life with another dubious scheme up his sleeve, and yet Eddie knows this is his only option to make enough dough in enough time. It's a risk, but if it pays off he will finally have a one-way ticket out of Hawkins.

Eddie can feel it: 1984 is going to be his year.

Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.

It was not his war.

The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives--even the Emperor himself--against Imperial orders.

But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier.

On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe starts down a path that can only end in fire. He flees his father and a future as a torturer only to be left stranded on a strange, backwater world.

Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, Hadrian must fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.

A lavishly reimagined and revised tenth anniversary edition of the New York Times bestselling first novel in the sensational Bone Season series, by the author of The Priory of the Orange Tree.

"Intelligent, inventive, dark, and engrossing." NPR

Welcome to Scion. No safer place.

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe.

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing.

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal - and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.