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Ogres are bigger than you.
Ogres are stronger than you.
Ogres rule the world.

It's always idyllic in the village until the landlord comes to call.

Because the landlord is an Ogre. And Ogres rule the world, with their size and strength and appetites. It's always been that way. It's the natural order of the world. And they only eat people sometimes.

But when the headman's son, Torquell, dares lift his hand against the landlord's son, he sets in motion a chain of events which let him learn about the dark sciences that ensured his masters' domination, the monstrous lies behind everything he knows, and the even worse truths about the Ogres, and the people they rule.

In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war... a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end. For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed location, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the cost of just a little blood. A few secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction can ever dominate, and the balance holds.

And yet the balance is beginning to give way. Mycroft Canner, convict, sentenced to wander the globe in service to all, knows more about this conspiracy the than he can ever admit. Carlyle Foster, counselor, sensayer, has secrets as well, and they burden Carlyle beyond description. And both Mycroft and Carlyle are privy to the greatest secret of all: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to life.

This collection of short stories by H. G. Wells is the most comprehensive yet, and showcases the hugely fertile imagination of the great author, whose ideas and storylines remain hugely relevant to this day.

Table of Contents:

• 3 - The Stolen Bacillus - (1894) - short story
• 9 - The Flowering of the Strange Orchid - (1894) - short story
• 16 - In the Avu Observatory - (1894) - short story
• 22 - The Triumphs of a Taxidermist - (1894) - short story
• 26 - A Deal in Ostriches - (1894) - short story
• 30 - Through a Window - (1894) - short story
• 37 - The Temptation of Harringay - (1895) - short story
• 42 - The Flying Man - (1895) - short story
• 48 - The Diamond Maker - (1894) - short story
• 55 - Aepyornis Island - (1894) - short story (variant of Æpyornis Island)
• 65 - The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes - (1895) - short story
• 74 - The Lord of the Dynamos - non-genre - (1894) - short story
• 82 - The Hammerpond Park Burglary - (1894) - short story
• 89 - The Moth - (1895) - short story
• 98 - The Treasure in the Forest - (1894) - short story
• 107 - The Plattner Story - (1896) - short story
• 124 - The Argonauts of the Air - (1895) - short story
• 135 - The Story of the Late Mr Elvesham - (1896) - short story (variant of The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham)
• 150 - In the Abyss - (1896) - short story
• 164 - The Apple - (1896) - short story
• 171 - Under the Knife - (1896) - short story
• 183 - The Sea Raiders - (1896) - short story (variant of The Sea-Raiders)
• 192 - Pollock and the Porroh Man - (1895) - short story
• 206 - The Red Room - (1896) - short story
• 214 - The Cone - non-genre - (1895) - short story
• 224 - The Purple Pileus - (1896) - short story
• 234 - The Jilting of Jane - (1894) - short story
• 241 - In the Modern Vein: An Unsympathetic Love Story - (1894) - short story
• 250 - A Catastrophe - (1895) - short story
• 258 - The Lost Inheritance - (1896) - short story
• 264 - The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic - (1895) - short story
• 272 - A Slip Under the Microscope - (1896) - short story
• 291 - The Crystal Egg - (1897) - short story
• 306 - The Star - (1897) - short story
• 316 - A Story of the Stone Age - (1897) - novella
• 363 - A Story of the Days to Come - (1899) - novella
• 436 - The Man Who Could Work Miracles - (1898) - short story
• 453 - Filmer - (1901) - short story
• 468 - The Magic Shop - (1903) - short story
• 478 - The Valley of Spiders - (1903) - short story
• 488 - The Truth About Pyecraft - (1903) - short story
• 497 - Mr Skelmersdale in Fairyland - (1903) - short story
• 509 - The Inexperienced Ghost - (1902) - short story
• 520 - Jimmy Goggles the God - (1898) - short story
• 531 - The New Accelerator - (1901) - short story
• 543 - Mr Ledbetter's Vacation - (1898) - short fiction (variant of Mr. Ledbetter's Vacation)
• 558 - The Stolen Body - (1898) - short story
• 572 - Mr Brisher's Treasure - (1899) - short fiction (variant of Mr. Brisher's Treasure)
• 581 - Miss Winchelsea's Heart - (1898) - short story
• 596 - A Dream of Armageddon - (1901) - short story
• 621 - The Door in the Wall - (1906) - short story
• 636 - The Empire of the Ants - (1905) - short story
• 650 - A Vision of Judgment - (1899) - short story (variant of A Vision of Judgement)
• 656 - The Land Ironclads - (1903) - novelette
• 675 - The Beautiful Suit - non-genre - (1909) - short story
• 679 - The Pearl of Love - (1925) - short story
• 683 - The Country of the Blind - (1904) - novelette
• 704 - The Reconciliation - (1895) - short story
• 710 - My First Aeroplane - [Little Mother - 1] - (1910) - short story
• 720 - Little Mother Up the Mörderberg - [Little Mother - 2] - (1910) - short story
• 730 - The Story of the Last Trump - (1915) - short story
• 743 - The Grisly Folk - (1921) - essay
• 757 - A Tale of the Twentieth Century: For Advanced Thinkers - (1887) - short fiction (variant of A Tale of the Twentieth Century)
• 762 - Walcote - (1898) - short story
• 769 - The Devotee of Art - (1888) - short fiction
• 779 - The Man with a Nose - (1894) - short fiction
• 783 - A Perfect Gentleman on Wheels - (1897) - short fiction
• 793 - Wayde's Essence - (1895) - short fiction
• 802 - A Misunderstood Artist - (1894) - short fiction
• 806 - Le Mari Terrible - (1895) - short story
• 810 - The Rajah's Treasure - (1896) - short story
• 821 - The Presence by the Fire - (1897) - short story
• 827 - Mr Marshall's Doppelganger - (1897) - short fiction (variant of Mr. Marshall's Doppelganger)
• 837 - The Thing in No. 7 - (1894) - short story
• 843 - The Thumbmark - (1894) - short story
• 850 - A Family Elopement - (1894) - short fiction
• 855 - Our Little Neighbour - (1895) - short fiction
• 863 - How Gabriel Became Thompson - (1894) - short fiction
• 872 - How Pingwill Was Routed - (1895) - short fiction
• 876 - The Loyalty of Esau Common: A Fragment - (1902) - short fiction (variant of The Loyalty of Esau Common)
• 891 - The Wild Asses of the Devil - (1915) - short story
• 901 - Answer to Prayer - (1937) - short story
• 904 - The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper - (1932) - short story
• 921 - The Country of the Blind (Revised Version) - (1939) - short fiction (variant of The Country of the Blind (revised))
• 951 - Introduction to The Country of the Blind and Other Stories - (1911) - essay (variant of Introduction (The Country of the Blind and Other Stories))
• 956 - Introduction to Revised Version of "The Country of the Blind" - (1939) - essay (variant of Introduction (The Country of the Blind))

Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel which had ignored his distress calls and left him to die.

When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science-fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for fifty years. (Bester fans should also note that iPicturebooks has reprinted The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)

Alfred Bester was among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman.

The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literature.

Set in an unspecified future, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).

Recently voted the greatest fantasy of all time, after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun is an extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, on an Earth transformed in mysterious and wondrous ways, in a time when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, the central character, is a torturer, exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his victims, and journeying to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est.

This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.

This book has recently been re-printed as part of the SF Masterworks series - see the new image below.

Thousands of years in the future in a distant part of the galaxy, lies the planet Shora, entirely covered by a world-spanning ocean. The huge and complex ecosystem of Shora is inhabited by the Sharers, an all female race who reproduce by parthenogensis, without males. The Sharers are immensely sophisticated in the life sciences, but have eschewed all unnatural technology. Over millennia of isolation, they have developed a complex philosophical and ethical system, idealistic, communal, and pacifist...

So begins a war, protracted and graphic, in which one side cannot fight because the concept is inconceivable in their philosophy...

"For Warre, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known..."

-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan XIII.

The world of Terra Ignota has been upended. War is inevitable. But after three centuries of peace, how does a war begin? With every world ruler friends with every other, how do the nations pick sides? How can war begin when every nation already has surrendered? Genius convict Mycroft Canner has completed the history started in Too Like the Lightning and concluded in Seven Surrenders. Now he begins his chronicle of the guideless search for an order to the conflict as the world slouches toward war, while a living myth contends with a celebrity assassin, a corrupt priestess and a captive god to shape the conflict and the world to come.

Classic fantasy from the amazing Sheri S. Tepper. Women rule in Women's Country. Women live apart from men, sheltering the remains of civilization They have cut themselves off with walls and by ordinance from marauding males. Waging war is all men are good for. Men are allowed to fight their barbaric battles! amongst themselves, garrison against garrison. For the sake of his pride, each boy child ritualistically rejects his mother when he comes of age to be a warrior. But all the secrets of civilization are strictly the possession of women. Naturally, there are men who want to know what the women know! And when Stavia meets Chernon, the battle of the sexes begins all over again. Foolishly, she provides books for Chernon to read. Before long, Chernon is hatching a plan of revenge against women!

From acclaimed, award-winning author Jo Walton: Philosopher Kings, a tale of gods and humans, and the surprising things they have to learn from one another. Twenty years have elapsed since the events of The Just City. The City, founded by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, organized on the principles espoused in Plato's Republic and populated by people from all eras of human history, has now split into five cities, and low-level armed conflict between them is not unheard-of.

The god Apollo, living (by his own choice) a human life as "Pythias" in the City, his true identity known only to a few, is now married and the father of several children. But a tragic loss causes him to become consumed with the desire for revenge. Being Apollo, he goes handling it in a seemingly rational and systematic way, but it's evident, particularly to his precocious daughter Arete, that he is unhinged with grief.

Along with Arete and several of his sons, plus a boatload of other volunteers--including the now fantastically aged Marsilio Ficino, the great humanist of Renaissance Florence--Pythias/Apollo goes sailing into the mysterious Eastern Mediterranean of pre-antiquity to see what they can find--possibly the man who may have caused his great grief, possibly communities of the earliest people to call themselves "Greek." What Apollo, his daughter, and the rest of the expedition will discover... will change everything.

The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story by E. M. Forster. The story is about a world in which many humans have lost the ability to live on the surface, and live underground. The story predicted a few technological and social innovations, such as the cinematophote (television) and videoconferencing.

Jonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear of pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the community. When Jonas turns 12 he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back.

2065: In a world that has rediscovered harmony with nature, the village of El Modena, California, is an ecotopia in the making. Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this "green" world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation.

Hugo, Nebula and Locus award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1978. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

• The 1979 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim, Arthur W. Saha
• The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #1 (1979), edited by Terry Carr
• Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Eighth Annual Collection (1979), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Nebula Winners Fourteen (1980), edited by Frederik Pohl
• The Hugo Winners, Volume 4: (1976-79) (1985), edited by Isaac Asimov
• The Best of the Nebulas (1989), edtied by Ben Bova

It is half of Tor Double #29: Nanowire Time / The Persistence of Vision and is included in the collections The Persistence of Vision (1979) and The John Varley Reader (2004).

Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza -- known to his friends as Hubert, Etc -- was too old to be at that Communist party.

But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be -- except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society -- and walk away.

After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life -- food, clothing, shelter -- from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.

It's still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it's war -- a war that will turn the world upside down.

The myriad alien civilizations populating far, distant worlds have many good reasons to detest the blight called "humankind"...

The only human child living in a work colony on the Martian satellite Phobos, little Margaret Bain has invented six imaginary companions to keep boredom and loneliness at bay. Each an extension of her personality, they are lost to her when she is forced to return to Earth. But they are not gone.

The time will come when Margaret, fully grown and wed, must leave this dying world as well-this Earth so denuded by thoughtlessness and chemistry that its only viable export is slaves. For now Margarets are scattered throughout the galaxy. And their creator must bring her selves home... or watch the human race perish.

High above the planet Harmony, the Oversoul watches. Its task, programmed so many millennia ago, is to guard the human settlement on this planet--to protect this fragile remnant of Earth from all threats. To protect them, most of all, from themselves.

The Oversoul has done its job well. There is no war on Harmony. There are no weapons of mass destruction. There is no technology that could lead to weapons of war. By control of the data banks, and subtle interference in the very thoughts of the people, the artificial intelligence has fulfilled its mission.

But now there is a problem. In orbit, the Oversoul realizes that it has lost access to some of its memory banks, and some of its power systems are failing. And on the planet, men are beginning to think about power, wealth, and conquest.

Throughout history, man has been searching for better ways to gather information about his universe. But although they may have longed for it, not even the most brilliant minds could conceive of a device as infinitely powerful or as immeasurably precise as the macroscope, until the twenty-first century. By analyzing information carried on macrons, this unbelievable tool brought the whole universe of wonders to man's doorstep. The macroscope was seen by many as the salvation of the human race.

But in the hands of the wrong man, the macroscope could be immensely destructive-infinitely more dangerous than the nuclear bomb. By searching to know too much, man could destroy the very essence of his mind. This is the powerful story of man's struggle with technology, and also the story of his human struggle with himself. This novel takes us across the breathtaking ranges of space as well as through the most touching places in the human heart. It is a story of coming of age, of sacrifice, and of love. It is the story of man's desperate search for a compromise between his mind and his heart, between knowledge and humanity.

Charlie Johns has been snatched from his home on 61 North 34th Street and delivered to the strange future world of Ledom. Here, violence is a vague and improbable notion. Technology has triumphed over hunger, overpopulation, pollution, even time and space. But there is a change Charlie finds even more shocking: gender is a thing of the past. Venus Plus X is Theodore Sturgeon's brilliant evocation of a civilization for whom tensions between male and female and the human preoccupation with sex no longer exist.

As Charlie Johns explores Ledom and its people, he finds that the human precepts he holds dear are profane in this new world. But has Charlie learned all there is to know about this advanced society? And why are the Ledom so intent on gaining Charlie's approval? Unsettling, compelling, and no less than visionary, here is science fiction at its boldest: a novel whose wisdom and lyricism make it one of the most original and insightful speculations on gender ever produced.

Waldo
North Power--Air is in trouble. Their aircraft are crashing at an alarming rate, and no one can figure out the cause. Desperate for an answer, they turn to Waldo, a crippled genius who lives in a zero--g home in orbit around Earth. But Waldo has little reason to want to help the rest of humanity--until he learns that the solution to Earth's problems also hold the key to his own.

Magic, Inc.
Under the guise of an agency for magicians, Magic, Inc. systematically squeezed out the small independent magicians. Then one businessman stood firm. But one man stands firm. And with the help of an Oxford--educated African shaman and a little old lady adept at black magic, he is willing to take on the demons of Hell to resolve the problem--once and for all!

Originally published in 1888, this prophetic work revolves around Julian West, a man who falls asleep near the end of the 19th century and wakes up in the year 2000. More than a brilliant visionary's view of the future, it is a guidebook that has stimulated some of the greatest thinkers of the modern age.

Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he's been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own. For years, his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the burden of this terrible knowledge. But Gail is dying, her mind ebbing slowly away, leaving him vulnerable to the chaotic flood of thought that threatens to sweep away his sanity.

Now Jeremy is on the run--from his mind, from his past, from himself--hoping to find peace in isolation. Instead he witnesses an act of brutality that propels him on a treacherous trek across a dark and dangerous America. From a fantasy theme park to the lair of a killer to a sterile hospital room in St. Louis, he follows a voice that is calling him to witness the stunning mystery at the heart of mortality.

Secrets Lie Within The Earth

"Tell me frankly what you saw in that chasm: I am sure it was something strange and terrible. Confide in me."

The engineer long endeavoured to evade my inquiries. But at last, he spoke.

"I will tell you all. A steady brilliant light. I left the cage and clambered down. As I drew nearer and nearer to the light, the chasm became wider, and at last I saw, to my unspeakable amaze, a broad level road at the bottom of the abyss, illumined as far as the eye could reach by what seemed artificial gas-lamps placed at regular intervals, as in the thoroughfare of a great city; and I heard confusedly at a distance a hum as of human voices. I know, of course, that no rival miners are at work in this district. Whose could be those voices? What human hands could have levelled that road and marshalled those lamps?"

"You will descend again?"

"I ought, yet I feel as if I durst not."