Literary Science Fiction

The science fiction genre has become increasingly influential in mainstream popular culture, evolving into one of the most engaging storytelling tools we use to think about technology and consider the shape of the future. Along the way, it has also become one of the major lenses we use to explore important philosophical questions. The origins of science fiction are most often thought to trace to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, a story born from a night of spooky tale-telling by the fireside that explores scientific, moral, and ethical questions that were of great concern in the 19th century - and that continue to resonate today.

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.

It’s tough to be a buffoon when the Age of Reason is trying to downsize your job. When the King’s Fool dies unexpectedly, a professional buffoon tries to move up the ranks and grab the top slot. But the politics involved in becoming a court jester are no laughing matter. The rules of becoming the top fool are simple: The winner is the one who performs the most outrageous act. Our buffoon and his fellows struggle for supremacy in a profession that is heading for extinction.

Lightning strikes the pole sending electric waves racing across dark castle walls into the laboratory and the lifeless body stitched together by a scientist called " mad " because he wants to create life in a lifeless creature. He dreams of a son, a companion, an incredible recreation of life, anything but,,,,a monster. Lightning flashes... It's alive ! This exciting full-cast presentation is like nothing you've ever heard before!

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality. 

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017. 

For centuries, the extremely powerful and ruthless vampire witches of the European Council have wandered the Earth, controlling governments, fostering war, creating political conflict, and often leaving absolute destruction in their wake. One of the strongest of them is set to create some havoc in the city of New Orleans, and it's definitely personal.

From number one, worldwide, best-selling fantasy author Morgan Rice comes the third book in a long-anticipated science-fiction series. With planet Earth destroyed, what will become of 13-year-old Kevin and Chloe in the mother ship? Will the aliens enslave them? What do they want? Is there any hope of escape? And will Kevin and Chloe ever return to Earth again?

‘Ted Chiang is one of the most exciting writers in science fiction . . . These parables are filled with hope and humanism.’ – The Daily Telegraph From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others – the basis for the Academy Award-winning film Arrival – comes a groundbreaking...

"Il est une chose admirable qui surpasse toujours la connaissance, l'intelligence, et même le génie, c'est l'incompréhension." En juin 2021, un événement insensé bouleverse les vies de centaines d'hommes et de femmes, tous passagers d'un vol Paris-New York. Parmi eux : Blake, père de famille respectable et néanmoins tueur à gages ; Slimboy, pop star nigériane, las de vivre dans le mensonge ; Joanna, redoutable avocate rattrapée par ses failles ; ou encore Victor Miesel, écrivain confidentiel soudain devenu culte.

Science fiction is a portal that opens doors onto futures too rich and strange to imagine. Fantasy takes us through doorways of magic and wonder. For more than a decade award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan has sifted through tens of thousands of stories to select the best, the most interesting, the most engaging science fiction and fantasy to thrill and delight readers. 

Jonathan Strahan, the award-winning and much lauded editor of many of genre's best known anthologies, is back with his 11th volume in this fascinating series, featuring the best science fiction and fantasy. With established names and new talent, this diverse and ground-breaking collection will take the listener to the outer reaches of space and the inner realms of humanity with stories of fantastical worlds and worlds that may still come to pass.

When X - an iconoclastic artist, writer and polarizing shape-shifter - dies suddenly, her widow, wild with grief, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognised as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals and destruction.

Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn brings his epic two-volume series The Hand of Thrawn to an explosive conclusion with a discovery that rocks the New Republic to its foundations--and threatens to resurrect the Empire. The Empire's master plan is under way. The New Republic is on the verge...

The best of the year's science fiction and fantasy stories as selected by the multiple award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan. Distant worlds, time travel, epic adventure, unseen wonders, and much more! The best, most original and brightest science fiction and fantasy stories from around the globe from the past 12 months are brought together in one collection by multiple award winning editor Jonathan Strahan.

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition.

Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision and try to create such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change.

„Das besondere Erlebnis für Bücherliebhaberinnen - Wellness, Literatur und sinnliche Abenteuer.“ Ein mysteriöser Todesfall in ungewöhnlicher Umgebung. Als Kommissarin Magdalena Schwarz zu einem Tatort gerufen wird, ahnt sie noch nicht, dass dieser Fall ihre Sicht auf die ‚reale’ Welt auf den Kopf stellen wird. Denn das ‚Literary Passion‘ birgt mehr als nur ein Geheimnis und vieles ist nicht, was es zu sein scheint.

An unabridged audio collection spotlighting the "best of the best" hard science fiction stories published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by top voice talents.