Penguin Books

The book that influenced writers from Carl Sagan to Stephen Hawking, Flatland is set in a two-dimensional world where life exists only in lines and shapes - until one of its inhabitants, 'A. Square', has his perspective transformed forever. This brilliantly eccentric classic is an invitation to see beyond our own reality.'At once a playful...

'Vonnegut looked the world straight in the eye and never flinched' J. G. BallardThis bitterly funny Cold War satire on the end of the world expresses our deepest fears of Armageddon, and has become a counter-culture classic.'A satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion' Jay McInerney'The closest thing we had to a Voltaire' Tom...

The best single work of science fiction yet written' Ursula K. Le GuinThe dystopian masterwork that inspired George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, We depicts a futuristic totalitarian society, 'OneState', where humans have become numbers. Suppressed in Russia for decades, it is a chilling vision of a world enslaved by technology.'Zamyatin's parable...

'A kind of magical realism for science fiction ... Quite, quite brilliant' TorPart pulp adventure, part otherworldly meditation, this is the story of Trafalgar Medrano: intergalactic trader and lover of bitter coffee and black cigarettes. In the bars and cafés of Rosario, Argentina, he recounts tall tales of his space escapades - involving, among...

In a distant universe, since the beginning of time, workers have spent their lives weaving intricate carpets from the hair of women and girls. But why? Andreas Eschbach's mysterious, poignant space opera explores the absurdity of work and of life itself.'A novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions through the working out of an intricate and...

'A giant of twentieth-century science fiction' GuardianOne of the world's most beloved science fiction writers, Stanislaw Lem was famed for his wryly comic, outlandish imaginings of the relationship between humans and technology. In this playful cosmic fantasia, two 'constructors' compete to dream up ever-more ingenious inventions in a universe...