A deluxe edition of super-charged, original and classic short stories. Featuring dystopia, post-apocalypse, time travel, robots and more, this brilliant collection brings together the best of today's writers (many stories previously unpublished), with an eclectic range of science fiction masters including H. Rider Haggard, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Philip Francis Nowlan, Edward Page Mitchell and Jack London. An eclectic collection of SF adventure tales. Perfect as a gift, and for years of reading pleasure.

Given that science fiction, in its many forms and genres, engages in sometimes serious speculation about science, history, and all types of social relations, and that its recurrent themes-such as the concept of the alien, alternative identities, and the role of technology-chime with so many contemporary anxieties and concerns, it is perhaps no surprise that as early as 1960 Kingsley Amis was able to remark (in his New Maps of Hell) that 'to read, and to study, science fiction are valid and interesting pursuits from any old point of view, whether literary, sociological, psychological, political, or what you will'. Now, as serious academic work on science fiction continues to blossom, this new four-volume collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative anthology to enable users to make better sense of the subject's unwieldy body of scholarship, and the continuing explosion in research output. The four volumes have been expertly edited by Andy Sawyer of Liverpool University, home of Europe's largest catalogued collection of SF material. Science Fiction is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor. It is an essential work of reference and will be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop resource.

'The classic tale of alien invasion, and still the best' The Times The first modern depiction of extra-terrestrials attacking the earth, The War of the Worlds remains one of the most influential of all science-fiction works. It shows the whole of human civilization under threat, as terrifying, tentacled Martians land in England, build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear. Edited by Patrick Parrinder with an Introduction by Brian Aldiss and Notes by Andy Sawyer

With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin - the new guest at The Coach and Horses - is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible, and is locked in a struggle to discover the antidote. Forced from the village, and driven to murder, he seeks the aid of an old friend, Kemp. The horror of his fate has affected his mind, however - and when Kemp refuse to help, he resolves to wreak his revenge.

Herbert George Wells was perhaps best known as the author of such classic works of science fiction as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. But it was in his short stories, written when he was a young man embarking on a literary career, that he first explored the enormous potential of the scientific discoveries of the day. He described his stories as "a miscellany of inventions," yet his enthusiasm for science was tempered by an awareness of its horrifying destructive powers and the threat it could pose to the human race. A consummate storyteller, he made fantastic creatures and machines entirely believable; and, by placing ordinary men and women in extraordinary situations, he explored, with humor, what it means to be alive in a century of rapid scientific progress.

A troubled insomniac in 1890s England falls suddenly into a sleep-like trance, from which he does not awake for over two hundred years. During his centuries of slumber, however, investments are made that make him the richest and most powerful man on Earth. But when he comes out of his trance he is horrified to discover that the money accumulated in his name is being used to maintain a hierarchal society in which most are poor, and more than a third of all people are enslaved. Oppressed and uneducated, the masses cling desperately to one dream - that the sleeper will awake, and lead them all to freedom.