Ten twisted tales that have haunted generations of readers and writers from H. P. Lovecraft to the creators of the hit TV series True Detective Nightmare imagery courses through these stories like blood through the veins. In "The Repairer of Reputations," a Lethal Chamber stands at the edge of Washington Square Park, open to all who can no longer bear the sorrows of life. A Parisian sculptor discovers a liquid solution that can turn any living thing-a...

John Carter returns to Mars at long last, discovers that his beloved, Dejah Thoris, is gone, and becomes trapped in the Eden of Mars, a legendary, brutal land that imprisons all who enter.

1916: The Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong and the wind in the leaves. Where have the mud, blood, and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone?2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive-some say mad, others allege dangerous-scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through the...

A tale set at the end of the twenty-first century finds the planet's divided hominid population subjected to the forces of a splintery metaconsciousness that inundates networks with plans for cataclysmic technologies, prompting an unwitting jury member to participate in a grueling decision.

A latest compilation in an annual series features top-selected stories by such leading genre masters as Paul McAuley, Elizabeth Bear, and Pat Cadigan.

"The Time Machine, H. G. Wells’s first novel, is a tale of Darwinian evolution taken to its extreme. Its hero, a young scientist, travels 800,000 years into the future and discovers a dying earth populated by two strange humanoid species: the brutal Morlocks and the gentle but nearly helpless Eloi. The Invisible Man mixes chilling terror, suspense, and acute psychological understanding into a tale of an equally adventurous scientist who discovers...

The complete science fiction treasury of H. G. Wells.

A billion years into the future, Earth's oceans have evaporated, and humanity has all but vanished. The inhabitants of the City of Diaspar believe theirs is the last city, but there is no way to find out for sure. The city is completely closed off by a high wall, and nobody has left in millions of years. The last child born in the city in millions of years, Alvin is insatiably curious about the outside world. He embarks on a quest that leads him to...

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist on a distant planet populated by the Ariekei, sentient beings famed for their unique language, returns to Embassytown after many years of deep space exploration to find she has become a living simile in the Ariekei language even though she cannot speak it, and she is torn by competing loyalties when hostilities erupt between humans and aliens.

In this chronicle of a long-ago land on civilisation's brink, possibly in Africa or Asia, Gorgik the Liberator's slave revolt gathers toward its conclusion. A richly written novel of myth and literacy, Nevèrÿona tells how young Pryn, who can write in this largely pre-literate land, flees her mountain village on a dragon's back for Neveryon's capital port, Kolhari, to aid Gorgik's rebelllion. Now on the Bridge of Lost Desire, now in Madam Keyne's...