“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own . . . ” And so H. G. Wells opened his thrilling The War of the Worlds in 1897. Since then millions of readers have shivered and shrieked at his depiction of a Martian invasion of Earth. The tale has become part of our cultural memory, but Wells didn’t tell the whole story. He never gave us the Martian side of the conflict. Now, Joseph Dougherty, the Emmy-winning writer, reports on the invasion of Earth from an up-close-and-personal Martian point of view. Dougherty views Wells’s epic battles from an all new, painfully modern perspective. Our narrator is Vvv, a reluctant conscript on board The First Cylinder to reach Earth in the invasion. Vvv is the Martian incarnation of all reluctant warriors, from Yossarian in Catch-22 to Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five. War is hell . . . for aliens and humans alike. Sardonic and heartrending, tragic and comic, The First Cylinder is a breakout science fiction novel in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury.

'A contemporary masterpiece' Guardian THE SECOND VOLUME OF THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY - NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALEX GARLAND (EX MACHINA) AND STARRING NATALIE PORTMAN, OSCAR ISAAC, GINA RODRIGUEZ AND TESSA THOMPSON Following the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in 'Annihilation', the second book of the Southern Reach trilogy introduces John Rodriguez, the new head of the government agency responsible for the safeguarding of Area X. His first day is spent grappling with the fall-out from the last expedition. Area X itself remains a mystery. But, as instructed by a higher authority known only as The Voice, the self-styled Control must battle to 'put his house in order'. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the mysteries of Area X begin to reveal themselves-and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he's promised to serve. Undermined and under pressure to make sense of everything, Rodriguez retreats into his past in a labyrinthine search for answers. Yet the more he uncovers, the more he risks, for the secrets of the Southern Reach are more sinister than anyone could have known.