Classic Science Fiction Collections

As any fan of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic rereader of books. In 2008, then-new science fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her rereading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor. Now this volume presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series.

Everyone is in a panic - a dragon has been discovered in a cave near the town! The people call for that famous dragon-slaying knight Saint George to defeat the monstrous beast. But when one smart little boy actually meets the dragon, he finds a harmless, friendly creature who would much rather write poems than burn villages

Imagine a future in which traditional gender roles are reversed and men have quite literally become enslaved to the capricious whims of their female masters. Irving E. Cox created a masterpiece, a futuristic story where men, and not women, are marketable products in a matriarchal, and not patriarchal, society. The role reversal as propounded in this story sounds unthinkable in our times, but it sounds plausible at some point in the distant future. This story shows how love always is a major part of life...and how it can either aid or break someone.

The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London, was the first example of a post-apocalyptic fiction novel in modern literature. Set in a ravaged and wild America, the story takes place in 2073, 60 years after the spread of the Red Death, an uncontrollable epidemic that depopulated and nearly destroyed the world in 2013. One of the few survivors, James Howard Smith, alias “Granser”, tells his incredulous and near-savage grandsons how the pandemic spread in the world and about the reactions of the people to contagion and death.

Matilda es una ávida lectora de solo cinco años. Sensible e inteligente, todos la admiran menos sus mediocres padres, que la consideran una inútil. Además, tiene poderes extraños y maravillosos.... Un día, Matilda decide liberarse y empieza a emplearlos contra la abominable y cruel señorita Trunchbull.

Prince John is plotting to seize the throne from his brother, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and Robin Hood and his merry band are making fools out of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Wilfred, knight of Ivanhoe, the son of Cedric the Saxon, is in love with his father’s ward, Rowena. Cedric, however, wishes her to marry Athelstane, a descendant of the royal Saxon line, whom Cedric hopes will restore the Saxon succession.

Bram Stoker’s classic Gothic horror novel about a vampire’s search for new blood… Perhaps the most famous vampire story of all time, Dracula is an awesome tale of a thrillingly bloodthirsty vampire whose nocturnal atrocities embody the dark underside of an outwardly moralistic age. As he searches for new prey, desirous to spread the undead curse, Dracula looks toward England. There he is met with resistance from a small band of men and women, led by the intrepid Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Will the people be able to keep the fearsome Dracula from terrorizing their community? This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

H.P. Lovecraft's most famous story in an amazing audio experience! “The Old Ones ruled the earth aeons before the rise of man. Traces of their cyclopean cities can still be found on remote islands, buried amid the shifting desert sands, and in the frozen wastes of the polar extremes. Originally they came to this world from the stars. They sleep now, some deep within the earth or beneath the sea. When the stars are right they shall again walk the earth.”

Originally published as part of a contest between Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, Frankenstein has since captured countless imaginations. When Dr. Victor Frankenstein learns the secret of imparting life to inanimate matter, he is eager to test his theories. The bones he collects to construct his human subject become a gruesome, frightening creature, endowed with supernatural size and strength. Lonely and miserable, the created comes to hate his creator. When the monster murders Frankenstein’s brother and his bride, the doctor embarks on a heated pursuit, only to put his own life in grave danger.

Five classic novelisations of exciting TV adventures set on distant planets! In The Sensorites, the First Doctor is forced into an uneasy alliance with a race of telepathic creatures from the Sense-Sphere. In Doctor Who and the Space War, the Third Doctor finds that a full-scale war between Earth and the planet Draconia seems inevitable. In Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks, the Third Doctor and Jo discover a vast army of Daleks waiting to mobilise and conquer on the planet Spiridon.

Politics is the second half of a single treatise by Aristotle (384 B.C.E - 322 B.C.E.), Ethics being the first. Both deal with one and the same subject: what Aristotle calls the philosophy of human affairs. He also refers to it as political science and social science. Aristotle collected and studied the constitutions of over 150 city states before writing his Politics.

"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", "Aladdin", "Sinbad the Sailor": These are just some of the strange and amazing stories that clever Scheherazade tells to captivate her husband, King Shahryar…and to save her own life. Each one is more fantastic than the last, filled with demons and dervishes, caliphs and genies, men transformed into dogs and monsters with eyes that glow. Like the king, children will find themselves enchanted by every tale.

Patrick Hunt's Myths for All Time presents twelve of the most timeless Greek myths retold in an affable, succinct fashion. These twelve myths, which have survived through the millennia, are made applicable today through Hunt's emphasis on the overriding message of each story. With foundations in ancient Greek scholarship, society, and philosophy, these stories have grown and taken new forms and thus remain relevant.

Warrior-prince Rama is about to be crowned Young King, when he hears the devastating news that his father, king of Ayodhya, has been tricked into banishing him to the forest. His devoted wife, Sita, insists on accompanying him in exile, but the evil 10-headed Lord Ravana has fallen deeply in love with the beautiful princess and steals her away. Aided by Hanuman, mighty captain of the monkeys, Rama sets out across the world to find her and destroy Ravana in a deadly battle.

Thomas Bulfinch introduces us to the gods of the Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies. We learn their stories and we also observe the similarities between the deities of yore. Comparing these stories and characters to those of some modern religions may produce some surprising results!

Rog Phillips' Rat in the Skull and Other SF Classics is a giant helping of classic Golden Age science fiction. The main ingredient is Phillips' science fiction masterpiece Rat in the Skull (unavailable for nearly 50 years). What the magazine editors said then about this controversial Hugo nominee novelette remains true today: "Some people will be shocked by this story. Others will be deeply moved. Everyone who reads it will be talking about it. Read the first four pages: then put it down if you can."

Four horror stories, over 30 hours of audio entertainment. Horror stories are intended to frighten, startle, and even disgust the listener. The tales of blood-sucking vampires, headless horsemen, hideous creatures, and transformed humans will leave you terrified yet compelled to listen to the next.

Long before 1984, Star Wars, or The Hunger Games, Victorian authors imagined a future where new science and technologies reshaped the world and universe they knew. The great themes of modern science fiction showed up surprisingly early: space and time travel, dystopian societies, even dangerously independent machines, all inspiring the speculative fiction of the Victorian era.

Of the two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer, The Odyssey serves to some extent as a sequel to The Iliad. The poem describes the journey home of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. In the Greek sources, the Trojan War lasted 10 years, and Odysseus spent 10 more years on the return journey due to the hostility of Poseidon, the god of earth and sea. Odysseus' fantastical adventures include a period of captivity on Calypso’s island, a visit to the lethargic lotus eaters, an encounter with a one-eyed Cyclops, and more.

This collection of five short stories touches on themes and topics throughout the genre including zombies, superheroes, artificial intelligence, and the changing role of birthdays in the future. "Billy and the Zombies" is a story about a boy who spent most of his life preparing for a zombie apocalypse and now has to deal with one in real life. "Mom's Special Day" talks about an indeterminate future where birthdays have a much different meaning than they do today. "The Trial of WLQC-73" discusses what happens when we create computers that are as human as we are with all of our faults and failings. "The Heist" is a story about a future where Superheroes aren't as clean cut as our comic books show them to be. "Chance Encounters" describes what happens when a simple misunderstanding spirals out of control.