Science Fiction
A broad genre of fiction which often involves speculations based on current or future science or technology.
Second Variety [en] (1953) 
Philip Kindred Dick
An influential short story by Philip K. Dick first published in Space Science Fiction magazine, in May 1953. It is one of Dick's many stories in which nuclear war has rendered the Earth's surface to an uninhabitable, gray ash pile, and the only things remaining are killer robots. (source:...
Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories
Deathworld 2 [en] (1963)
Harry Harrison
Jason is kidnapped by a self-righteous enemy out to bring him to justice for his various crimes. He forces a crash-landing on a planet where the human population has regressed. The technology is extremely primitive and knowledge is split up among many small clans, each one jealously monopolizing...
Genre: Science Fiction
Planet of the Damned [en] (1962)
Harry Harrison
Dis was a harsh, inhospitable, dangerous place and the Magter made it worse. They might have been human once -- but they were something else now. The Magter had only one desire -- to kill everything, themselves, their planet, the universe if they could. Brion Brandd was sent in at the eleventh...
Genre: Science Fiction
Star Hunter [en] (1961)
Andre Alice Norton
Somewhere on the jungle world of Jumala, there is a man in hiding -- a man whose mind has been reconditioned with another's brain pattern and for whom there is a fabulous reward. Star Hunter is the thrilling account of an other-worldly game of hide-and-seek between a man who does not know all...
Genre: Science Fiction
Key Out of Time [en] (1963)
Andre Alice Norton
Ross and Arthur are helped by Karara and two trained dolphins in Hawaika, which was settled by Hawaiian and Polynesian settlers. The planet Hawaikan is a warm tropical planet that is mostly ocean. It is so different from what they had expected that they decide to risk a time trip back in the...
Genres: Adventure, Science Fiction
Deathworld [en] (1960)
Harry Harrison
Deathworld centres on Jason dinAlt, a professional gambler who uses his somewhat erratic psionic abilities to tip the odds in his favour. He is challenged by a man named Kerk Pyrrus (who turns out to be the ambassador from the planet Pyrrus) to turn a large amount of money into an immense sum by...
Genre: Science Fiction
All Cats Are Gray [en] (1953)
Andre Alice Norton
Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed--for humans at any rate.
Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents [en] (1895)
Herbert George Wells
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents is a collection of fifteen fantasy and science fiction short stories written by the English author H. G. Wells between 1893 and 1895. It was first published by Methuen & Co. in 1895 and was Wells's first book of short stories. All of the stories had first...
Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories
The Chessmen of Mars [en] (1922)
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A freak storm on Mars throws Tara, Princess of Helium and beautiful daughter of John Carter, wildly off course after she embarks on an imprudent flight. Gahan, Jed of Gathol, her new admirer, takes off in pursuit and they soon find themselves in a land of bodies without heads and heads without...
Genres: Adventure, Science Fiction
Plague Ship [en] (1956)
Andre Alice Norton
The tramp-freighter spaceship Solar Queen had exclusive trading rights to Sargol and its fabulous gems. But the crew's bravery and resourcefulness strained to the breaking point as they met Sargol's three challenges: the enigmatic obstinancy of the planet's catlike natives, ruthless incursions...
Genre: Science Fiction
When the Sleeper Wakes [en] (1899)
Herbert George Wells
The Sleeper is just an ordinary man, no one special, just someone going about his everyday business. Until one day he awakes, and finds that the world around him has changed. No longer a nobody, he has been catapulted into the unenviable position of a pawn in a dangerous conspiracy where the...
Genre: Science Fiction
Pellucidar [en] (1923)
Edgar Rice Burroughs
In this sequel to At the Earth's Core, David Innes vows revenge and returns to the Inner World of Pellucidar to rescue the beautiful Dian, who had been torn from his arms by trickery. However, his return trip places him far from the land of his beloved and he is forced to undertake a desperate...
Genres: Adventure, Science Fiction
The Master of the World [en] (1904)
Jules Verne
"It was seen first in North Carolina, or something was, smoking up from a mountain crater. With blinding speed, it roared past cars on a Pennsylvania road. It skimmed the Atlantic, then at the flick of its captain's will dove beneath the waves...It was the "Terror"...ship, sub, plane, and land...
Genres: Adventure, Science Fiction
The War in the Air [en] (1908)
Herbert George Wells
This thrilling tale is H. G. Wells at his modernist, visionary best. In 1907, a naive Londoner named Bert Smallways finds himself an unwitting passenger on a fleet of German airships heading over the Atlantic to attack New York. What unfolds in characteristically Wellsian fashion is a clash of...
Genres: Science Fiction, War
A Modern Utopia [en] (1905)
Herbert George Wells
Wells' uncanny ability to highlight the problems which are now most acute and supply tentative solutions that allow a maximum of individual freedom merits serious consideration. A Modern Utopia is one of the first important blueprints for the modern welfare state and an early major statement of...
Genres: Philosophy, Science Fiction
Flatland [en] (1884)
Edwin Abbott Abbott
How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility of a third? Edwin A. Abbott's droll and delightful "romance of many dimensions" explores this conundrum in the experiences of his protagonist, A Square, whose linear world is invaded by an emissary Sphere bringing...
Genres: Satire, Science Fiction, Short Stories
Micromegas [en] (1752)
Voltaire
Micromegas is an inhabitant of the star Sirius, 120,000 feet tall and accompanied by a dwarf from Saturn who is 6000 feet tall. During a grand tour of the universe they visit Earth in 1737 and, using makeshift microscopes, they detect a boating party of tiny human philosophers.
Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories
The Big Trip Up Yonder [en] (1954)
Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut's short work, "The Big Trip Up Yonder," is a genre science fiction tale originally published in the magazine "Galaxy Science Fiction" in 1959 -- "If it was good enough for your grandfather, forget it ... it is much too good for anyone else!"
Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories
Operation Haystack [en] (1959)
Frank Herbert
It's hard to ferret out a gang of fanatics; it would, obviously, be even harder to spot a genetic line of dedicated men. But the problem Orne had was one step tougher than that! Field Agent Lewis Orne must contend with genetic manipulation and dig deep into a complex political situation to...
Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories
Subspace Survivors [en] (1960)
Edward Elmer Smith
There has always been, and will always be, the problem of surviving the experience that any trained expert can handle...when there hasn't been any first survivor to be an expert! When no one has ever gotten back to explain what happened....
Genre: Science Fiction