Reception: Classic

The Worm Ouroboros

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The Worm Ouroboros
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E.R. Edison’s The Worm Ouroboros inspired the epic-fantasy writers that followed him. This production is of the first edition (1922).

The Lords of Demonland are celebrating Lord Juss’s birthday when an envoy arrives from Witchland. He brings demands from King Gorice XI of Witchland that the Lords of Demonland “kiss his toe, and acknowledge him to be their King and they, his ill-conditioned, disobedient children”. The Lords of Demonland reject this utterly and, to settle the matter, they challenge King Gorice to a wrestling match against their champion, Lord Goldry Bluszco.

But the situation is worsened by the result of that match and ultimately, war is declared. A war that includes dark magic, sorcery, quests, mystical lands, and heroic high-adventure. Ursula K. Le Guin called it “An eccentric masterpiece”, C. S. Lewis said it represented “A new climate of the imagination”, Orville Prescott said it was “A literary event of the first order.”

Critics compared Tolkien’s writing to it when he first published The Lord of the Rings and he freely acknowledged its influence. Eddison writes his narrative in a lyrical, medieval style and in the tradition of Norse mythology, Arthurian myths, and Greek tragedy. In his short dedication he says, “It is neither allegory nor fable but a story to be read for its own sake”, however, the theme of repetition (the cyclical nature of life, history, and war), is undeniable. The “worm (serpent or dragon) Ouroboros” is, after all, “The serpent which eats its own tail”.

At the Mountains of Madness

At the Mountains of Madness
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Published: 2014
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“On an expedition to Antarctica, Professor William Dyer and his colleagues discover the remains of ancient half-vegetable, half-animal lifeforms. The extremely early date in the geological strata is surprising because of the highly-evolved features found in these previously unknown life-forms.

Through a series of dark revelations, violent episodes, and misunderstandings, the group learns of Earth’s secret history and legacy.” –Amazon.com.

1984

1984
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Published: 1994-05-12
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George Orwell, born in 1903 in India was an English novelist, essayist and critic. He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of the major political movements of his times, including imperialism, fascism and communism. Orwell was the author of six novels as well as numerous essays and non-fiction works. His famous works include Animal Farm' and 'Burmese days'.

Brave New World

Brave New World
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Now reissued in a gorgeous hardcover edition: “one of the most prophetic dystopian works of the 20th century” (Wall Street Journal) must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit in the face of our “brave new world.” Huxley’s masterpiece has become a bestseller once again after the American election.

Aldous Huxley’s profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order whose motto is “Community, Identity, Stability.”—all at the cost of our freedom, humanity, and perhaps our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization.

Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning as we head into tomorrow and as a thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a twenty-first-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner

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Nebula Award Finalist:Mankind has been reduced to slavery by technology and surveillance, in this near-future novel from the author of Stand on Zanzibar.

In The Jagged Orbit, Brunner, writing at the peak of form that allowed him to create Stand on Zanzibar, takes a long, hard, disturbing, and hilarious look at the near and not-so-distant future. Catastrophic changes due to rampant drug abuse, uncontrolled violence, high-level government corruption, inhumane treatment of the too-readily defined “insane,” and the accompanying collapse of the social order are wreaking havoc on the world we recognize and turning it into a reality we must fear and hope to avoid. Brunner tells a spine-chilling tale of where the world could possibly go that is all too believable and real for our comfort.

“For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, it is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words. For new readers, Brunner’s work proves itself the very definition of timeless.

Armor by John Steakly

Armor
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Published: 1984-12-04
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A best-selling novel of military science fiction follows the battle of a one-man, atomic-powered, armored fighting machine on the alien planet of Banshee, home to a horde of berserk enemies of humanity.  The military sci-fi classic of courage on a dangerous alien planet

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water is poisonous. It is home to the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered.

Body armor has been devised for the commando forces that are to be dropped on Banshee—the culmination of ten thousand years of the armorers’ craft. A trooper in this armor is a one-man, atomic powered battle fortress. But he will have to fight a nearly endless horde of berserk, hard-shelled monsters—the fighting arm of a species which uses biological technology to design perfect, mindless war minions.

Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred. And he is protected, not only by his custom-fitted body armor, but by an odd being which seems to live within him, a cold killing machine he calls “The Engine.”

This is Felix’s story—a story of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat, and the story, too, of how strength of spirit can be the greatest armor of all.

Childhood’s End By Arthur C. Clarke

Childhood's End
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Published: 2001-07-03
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The inspiration for the Syfy miniseries. Childhood’s End is one of the defining legacies of Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many other groundbreaking works. Since its publication in 1953, this prescient novel about first contact gone wrong has come to be regarded not only as a science fiction classic but as a literary thriller of the highest order.

Spaceships have suddenly appeared in the skies above every city on the planet. Inside is an intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior alien race known as the Overlords.

At first, their demands seem benevolent: unify Earth, eliminate poverty, end war. But at what cost? To those who resist, it’s clear that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. Has their arrival marked the end of humankind . . . or the beginning?

Praise for Childhood’s End “A first-rate tour de force.”—The New York Times “Frighteningly logical, believable, and grimly prophetic . . . Clarke is a master.”—Los Angeles Times “There has been nothing like it for years; partly for the actual invention, but partly because here we meet a modern author who understands that there may be things that have a higher claim on humanity than its own ‘survival.’ ”—C. S. Lewis “As a science fiction writer, Clarke has all the essentials.”—Jeremy Bernstein, The New Yorker

Shadow & Claw: The First Half of The Book of the New Sun

Shadow & Claw
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“The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe’s most remarkable work, hailed as “a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis” by Publishers Weekly. Shadow & Claw brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume:

The Shadow of the Torturer is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession — showing mercy toward his victim.

Ursula K. Le Guin said, “Magic stuff … a masterpiece … the best science fiction I’ve read in years!” The Claw of the Conciliator continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny.

Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Orphans of the Sky
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The Jordan Foundation sponsored the Proxima Centauri Expedition in 2119, in attempt to reach the nearer stars of the galaxy. But that was far in the mythic past.

The original purpose of the Ship epic voyage has long been forgotten, and gor generations the ginat spaceship, lost between the stars, is the only world that the people aboard have known. A strange civilization has evolved, with its own superstitions, savage religion, rigid class structure and mutant outcasts. Then, one young man discovers the truth about the Ship and changes everything, for ever…

The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Conan the Barbarian Book 1) full collection with audiobook available

The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
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Published: 2003-12-02
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Conan is one of the greatest fictional heroes ever created– a swordsman who cuts a swath across the lands of the Hyborian Age, facing powerful sorcerers, deadly creatures, and ruthless armies of thieves and reavers. “Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities . . . there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. . . . Hither came…

Illustrated version and with audiobooks too

The legendary work of Robert E. Howard who created the sword and sorcery genre of fantasy wich this site hope to help popularize again

collected in 3 books

book 1 here, book 2 here, book 3 here