Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015, and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin from 2015 to 2018. His previous books include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare's Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation, all available in Penguin and now between them translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK's highest civil honour. In 2015 he was awarded the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize. In 2018 the radio series Living with the Gods received the Sandford Saint Martin Award for Religious Broadcasting.

Neil MacGregor

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David Lindsay

After journeying across the stars, a man from Earth finds himself lost among the scarlet deserts, black cliffs and semi-sentient oceans of Tormance, a world lit by the star Arcturus. Pulled northward by the sound of drums, and undergoing strange physical transformations, the Earthman's adventures with the planet's inhabitants begin to shine with arcane significance - ending finally in startling and unforgettable revelations. 
 
At once an extraordinary odyssey across a bizarre alien world, a visceral exploration of human thought and behaviour, and a unique metaphysical examination of the cosmos, David Lindsay's masterpiece is a pioneering work of science fiction that has influenced generations of writers, including C.S Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Philip Pullman.

A Voyage to Arcturus

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany is widely considered to be one of the greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth century, and a pioneer of Black and Queer genre fiction. 
 
Driftglass, the definitive collection of Delany's science fiction stories, displays the extraordinary depth of his writing: strange men and women labouring beneath the seas, the struggle of those attempting to break free from their galaxies, the intrigue of violent underworlds, as well as children with psychic powers and an ice cream parlour on a moon of Neptune. Radical, inventive, and brilliantly original, Driftglass contains the Hugo and Nebula award-winning stories 'Aye, and Gomorrah. . .' and 'Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones'.

Driftglass

Kurt Vonnegut

Dr Felix Hoenikker - a father of the atomic bomb - has another creation. Far more dangerous than that which levelled Hiroshima is ice-nine, a chemical that could freeze the world's oceans solid. The search for Hoenikker leads first to his three children, each in possession of the chemical, and then to the Republic of San Lorenzo, a mysterious island in thrall to a bizarre religion. 
First published a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cat's Cradle is shot through with a nauseous anxiety about the nuclear apocalypse. Yet Vonnegut's darkly hilarious dissection of apathy and selfishness on the edge of the abyss speaks clearly to our own environmental angst and to the fragility of civilization.

Cat's Cradle

James Tiptree Jr.

James Tiptree Jr, the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon, is widely considered to be one of the most influential American genre writers ever, and a pioneer of feminist science fiction. 
 
10,000 Light Years from Home, her brilliant debut collection, displays all her trademark humour, intensity and originality, with dark dystopian thrills, fast-paced intergalactic satire and hardboiled tales of alien invasion. A startling and unforgettable depiction of humanity's experience among the stars, the collection includes some of Tiptree's most powerful stories: 'And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side', 'The Man Who Walked Home' and 'Beam Us Home'.

Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home

Angélica Gorodischer

In the cafes and bars of Rosario, Argentina, there are sure to be many tall tales told. But none, perhaps, quite as spectacular as those recounted by Trafalgar Medrano. With a coffeepot and a pack of cigarettes to hand, he will nonchalantly tell you all about his otherworldly adventures: from studying dancing troglodytes on a mucky planet, to befriending the only chaotic man in a perfectly arranged society, to a close shave in 15th century Spain. The things Trafalgar has seen... 
 
Cosmopolitan, wildly imaginative and, above all else, pure fun, Angélica Gorodischer's Trafalgar is an utterly unique work of science fiction.

Trafalgar

Daring, energetic, and struck through with linguistic inventiveness, Warm Worlds and Otherwise is one of the most influential short story collections in all of science fiction, and one of the principle achievements of James Tiptree Jr - the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon. 
 
Demonstrating Tiptree's eye for unnerving future dystopias and her unparalleled depiction of strange worlds and mysterious creatures, Warm Worlds and Otherwise also traces a movement toward ground-breaking explorations of sexuality, gender and race. Included in this collection are the Hugo and Nebula award-winning 'The Girl Who was Plugged In' and 'Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death', as well as the extraordinary 'The Women Men Can't See'.

Warm Worlds and Otherwise

Arkady Strugatsky

Boris Strugatsky

Astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov is on the precipice of a major discovery - a Nobel Prize-worthy breakthrough. Yet, home alone in his Leningrad apartment, his work is beginning to be stymied. Strange and improbable distractions are mounting around him - and he is not alone. Across the city, his scientific colleagues, all close to their own Eureka moments, keep finding themselves subject to countless mysterious interruptions. Are they paranoid, or is a malign authority conspiring against them...? 
A science fiction classic from two Russian masters, One Billion Years to the End of the World is at turns both hilarious and suspenseful, while at its heart hiding a quiet yet biting critique of Soviet totalitarianism.

One Billion Years to the End of the World

Olaf Stapledon

Driven out into the night by the bitterness of his life, an Englishman finds himself contemplating the night sky - its immensity, its mystery. Without explanation, he suddenly finds himself floating out into its depths. There he explores strange worlds, links with other conscious beings, and witnesses the birth and death of civilizations. As the scope of his experiences expands, the universe itself is revealed to him - its startling origins, its potential fate, and our place within its vastness... 
 
One of greatest and most influential science fiction novels ever written, Olaf Stapledon's philosophical masterwork is the ultimate exploration of the cosmos.

Star Maker

Robert Sheckley

Announced in a thunderclap out of another day's tedium, Tom Carmody - a hapless New Yorker - learns that he is the winner of the Intergalactic Sweepstake. Accepting with a shrug, he is whipped across the universe to collect his prize. The catch? There's no way home. Enlisting the help of galactic bureaucrats, planetary engineers and a couple of gods, Carmody embarks on a desperate search for Earth, all the while being pursued by a perplexing predatory creature . . . 
 
Often compared to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dimension of Miracles is a masterwork of electric humour that offers an oblique examination of human nature amid the vastness of the cosmos.

Dimension of Miracles

Often considered to be Robert Sheckley's best short story collection, Untouched By Human Hands displays all of the author's signature surreal humour and eye for the unreal. Featuring human space exploration from the perspective of appalled aliens, darkly comic dystopias and wry fables of technological disaster, this slim collection is rich in wit, invention and provocative insight, and includes the classic stories 'The Monsters', Specialist' and 'Seventh Victim'.

Untouched By Human Hands

Andreas Eschbach

In the dusty wastes of a far-flung planet, strange artisans toil. Like their fathers before them, they tie intricate knots out of the hair of their wives and daughters, slowly forming carpets. Delicate and unique, each carpet requires an entire lifetime of work - and all will be sold to pave the Emperor's palace. 
Then, one day, the empire falls. Soon, strange men begin to arrive from the stars, in search of the carpets' true destination. What they discover will astonish them . . . 
 
Combining brilliant world-building with an irresistible sense of mystery, Andreas Eschbach's acclaimed space opera is a compelling meditation on faith, fundamentalism and the meaning of life itself.

The Hair Carpet Weavers

Stanislaw Lem

Stanislaw Lem is perhaps the most original and influential European science-fiction writer of the twentieth century. 
The Cyberiad, one of Lem's most beloved works, follows the exploits of the Trurl and Klapaucius, two ingenious 'constructors'. In their adventures through a strange medieval universe they encounter a machine capable of creating anything that starts with the letter 'N'; kings who oppress their people with parlour games; and PhD pirates who demand ransom in knowledge rather than gold. It is a world where UFOs land silently on lawns at dawn, and where even the stars can be re-arranged for advertising purposes.

The Cyberiad

Fables for the Cybernetic Age

Adam Wisniewski-Snerg

Is BER-66 a human or a machine? As he navigates the corridors and locked rooms of a strange bunker, he must solve the mysteries of murderous doppelgangers, a slow-motion city on the verge of destruction, and ultimately, the all-powerful Mechanism itself... 
 
Considered to be one of the most important and original Polish science fiction novels of all time but never before translated into English, Adam Wisniewski-Snerg's debut novel is a haunting and mind-bending masterpiece of philosophical enquiry that penetrates deep into the heart of what it means to be human.

Robot

Edwin Abbott

A work that still poses provocative questions about perception and reality, Flatland is a brilliant parody of Victorian society where all existence is limited to length and breadth - its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. The amiable narrator, A. Square, provides an overview of this fantastic world - its physics and metaphysics, its history, customs and religious beliefs. But when a strange visitor mysteriously appears and transports the incredulous Flatlander to the Land of Three Dimensions, his worldview is forever shattered. 
 
Written more than a century ago, Flatland offers an extraordinary animation of dimension, geometry and physical space that continues to resonate in contemporary science.

Flatland

Yevgeny Zamyatin

In a glass city composed of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of OneState live their lives without passion or agency. That is until D-503, a man tasked with bringing the Revolution to the stars, meets a remarkable woman . . . 
 
Supressed in Russia for decades, Zamyatin's dystopian masterpiece prophesized the worst excesses of the Soviet Union, while creating an enduring and vivid vision of what future societies might look like - a vision that would inspire George Orwell's 1984 and many subsequent dystopias.

George S. Schuyler

It's New Years Day in 1933 in New York City and Max Disher, a young black man, has just heard the news: a mysterious doctor has discovered a strange process that can turn black skin white - a new way to 'solve the American race problem'. Max, who is tired of being rejected and abused because of his dark skin, leaps at the opportunity. After receiving the 'Black-No-More' procedure, he becomes Matthew Fisher, a white man who is able to attain everything he has ever wanted: money, power and a beautiful wife. But it soon becomes apparent that America, whiter than ever, is becoming more and more dangerous . . . 
 
An extraordinary, cutting satire, Black No More is an utterly unique work of science fiction, and one of the first works of Black speculative fiction.

Black No More

H. P. Lovecraft

In the deep glens of Massachusetts, in the wild hills of Vermont, and in Australia's sandy wastes, unfathomable things lurk. Things that shine with an unnatural light, that speak and buzz strangely in the night, that prowl in the mind. Things not of our Earth. 
 
Widely considered to be the most significant writer of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, H.P. Lovecraft made a profound contribution to science fiction. From their singularly creepy atmospheres to their portrayal of extraordinary creatures and happenings, the three stories included in this collection - 'The Colour Out of Space', 'The Whisperer in the Darkness' and 'The Shadow Out of Time' - are peerless examples of the genre.

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