Available as single volumes or as a complete set, this collection traces the evolution of a literary genre: the British speculative future war novel. Taking science fiction from the 1890s, this set explores the various ways in which the science fiction tradition can be interpreted.

Dark, desolate and fantastical, The Purple Cloud was a pioneer in the genre of apocalyptic novels, and the first great science fiction work of the twentieth century. It inspired authors such as H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. The Purple Cloud tells the grandly bleak story of Adam Jeffson: the first man to reach the North Pole and the last man left alive on earth. A sweet-smelling, deadly cloud of poisonous gas has devastated the world, and as Jeffson travels the stricken globe in search of human life, he slowly succumbs to madness, and unleashes fire and destruction on his planet. John Sutherland's introduction discusses M. P. Shiel's dissolute life, the originality of his book and its place within the context of 'last man' novels. This edition also includes a chronology, notes and further reading.

This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.

"If now a swell from the Deep has swept over this planetary ship of earth, and I, who alone chanced to find myself in the furthest stern, as the sole survivor of her crew...What then, my God, shall I do?". The Purple Cloud is widely hailed as a masterpiece of science fiction and one of the best "last man" novels ever written. A deadly purple vapor passes over the world and annihilates all living creatures except one man, Adam Jeffson. He embarks on an epic journey across a silent and devastated planet, an apocalyptic Robinson Crusoe putting together the semblance of a normal life from the flotsam and jetsam of his former existence. As he descends into madness over the years, he becomes increasingly aware that his survival was no accident and that his destiny - and the fate of the human race - are part of a profound, cosmological plan.

Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865-1947) was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent, best known for supernatural and scientific romances. The Purple Cloud remains his most famous and often reprinted novel.

This is a new release of the original 1948 edition.

M. P. Shiel died in 1947, but his dark imagination continues to influence writers and readers of weird and supernatural fiction today. These twelve stories demonstrate his talent for descriptive prose and the breadth of his vivid imagination. Shiel well deserves a place among the best of the early weird fiction writers. The stories included in this collection are Huguenin's Wife, The Spectre-Ship, Tulsah, Vaila, Xelucha, The Bride, A Shot at the Sun, The Bell of St. Sepulcre, The Great King, The Pale Ape, Dark Lot of One Saul, and The Place of Pain.

See now a shocking scrimmage, a rush and crush for precedence, surge upon surge of men jostling each other in a struggle to get near him, sticks reaching awkwardly over heads to inflict far forceless blows, and on his face the fists; a hundred roaring "Order ," fighting against the tide; three hundred shrieking, "Kill him " "Have him done with " "Dash out his brains ," and pressing to that job. Sergeant-at-Arms, meanwhile, Clerk-attending-the-Table, and the physician, had run to give the alarm; but it was by one of those miracles of wild minutes, when turbulent sprites appear to mix themselves in the business of men, worse....