Reception: Classic

The Stars My Destination

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The Stars My Destination
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#5 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series,
a library of the finest science fiction ever written.

“Science fiction has only produced a few works of actual genius,
and this is one of them”—Joe Haldeman

“Bester at the peak of his powers is, quite simply, unbeatable”
—James Lovegrove

Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel that had intended to leave him to die.

Alfred Bester won the first, inaugural Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1953 for The Demolished Man

Hewas among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman.

Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged
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Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy…why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction…why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph…why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.

Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.

Northwest Smith

Northwest Smith
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Meet the iconic space outlaw who “could be Han Solo’s grandfather,” in these stories by a pioneer of Golden Age science fiction (SF Signal).

First published in Weird Tales in the early 1930s, C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories, especially “Shambleau,” were hailed as some of the most imaginative and vivid science fiction stories ever to come out of the golden age of sci-fi. At a time when women were heavily underrepresented in the genre, Moore was among the first to gain critical and popular acclaim, and decades later was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Northwest Smith, now recognized by many as the archetypal space smuggler and gunslinger, is an adventurer in the classic sense of the word, and these thirteen stories chronicle the bizarre dangers, interstellar wonders, and titillating romances that captured the imagination of a generation.

The Dark World

The Dark World
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One of the earlier example of what is no known as “portal fantasy”

World War II veteran Edward Bond’s recuperation from a disastrous fighter plane crash takes a distinct turn for the weird when he encounters a giant wolf, a red witch, and the undeniable power of the need-fire, a portal to a world of magic and swordplay at once terribly new and hauntingly familiar. In the Dark World, Bond opposes the machinations of the dread lord Ganelon and his terrible retinue of werewolves, wizards, and witches, but all is not as it seems in this shadowy mirror of the real world, and Bond discovers that a part of him feels more at home here than he ever has on Earth.

Doomsday Morning

Doomsday Morning
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A classic, post-apocalyptic vision of America created by C. L. Moore, an undisputed master of science fiction’s golden age.

In the wake of a nuclear war, the totalitarian system known as Comus has restored order in a shattered America. Comus controls every aspect of American life, from communications to transportation to law enforcement, but cracks are beginning to show: rumors of a rebellion in California are brewing, and Comus’s leadership is aging. History is at a crossroads, and the man who will decide the outcome is a washed-up actor named Howard Rohan.

Leading a troupe of theatre players to perform in the heart of rebel territory, Howard’s true mission is to gather intelligence on a device that could bring down Comus. But Rohan finds himself slipping between his roles as a double agent and supposed revolutionary sympathizer, to the point where even he isn’t sure where he stands. As America edges closer to its reckoning, Rohan will need to decide who he’s been lying to: the rebels, Comus, or himself.

“A finely wrought dystopic vision where an oppressive future government utilizes communication networks to spread its tentacles across the United States.” —Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations

“It need hardly be mentioned at this late date what a gloriously fine writer Moore was . . . she combined elegant yet colorful prose with a distinctive emotional flair and one helluva imagination.” —Fantasy Literature

John the Balladeer by Manly Wade Wellman

John the Balladeer by Manly Wade Wellman
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In John the Balladeer, Manly Wade Wellman created one of the great characters in all of horror and fantasy literature. Armed with his silver-stringed guitar and an endless trove of folk songs, John travels the backwoods of Appalachia, battling supernatural evil with his own brand of down-home charm and endless resourcefulness. In these tales, John wanders the Southern mountains, encountering hoodoo men and witch women, strange supernatural beasts, malevolent spirits, and even George Washington’s ghost.

Edited by horror legend Karl Edward Wagner, this volume contains the complete John the Balladeer stories in their original, unaltered form, as they first appeared in magazines and anthologies between 1951 and 1987. Also featured are a foreword by Wellman’s friend and literary executor David Drake and an introduction by Wagner.

“Just as J. R. R. Tolkien brilliantly created a modern British myth cycle, so did Manly Wade Wellman give to us an imaginary world of purely American fact, fantasy and song.” – Karl Edward Wagner

“This is the real thing-a book of haunting fantasies with their roots going down deep into the American folk tradition.” – Robert Silverberg

The Long Ships (New York Review Books Classics)

The Long Ships (New York Review Books Classics)
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A beloved Viking saga and masterpiece of historical fiction, The Long Ships is a high spirited adventure that stretches from Scandinavia to Spain, England, Ireland, and beyond. 

Frans Gunnar Bengtsson’s The Long Ships resurrects the fantastic world of the tenth century AD when the Vikings roamed and rampaged from the northern fastnesses of Scandinavia down to the Mediterranean. Bengtsson’s hero, Red Orm—canny, courageous, and above all lucky—is only a boy when he is abducted from his Danish home by the Vikings and made to take this place at the oars of their dragon-prowed ships. Orm is then captured by the Moors in Spain, where he is initiated into the pleasures of the senses and fights for the Caliph of Cordova.

Escaping from captivity, Orm washes up in Ireland, where he marvels at those epicene creatures, the Christian monks, and from which he then moves on to play an ever more important part in the intrigues of the various Scandinavian kings and clans and dependencies. Eventually, Orm contributes to the Viking defeat of the army of the king of England and returns home an off-the-cuff Christian and a very rich man, though back on his native turf new trials and tribulations will test his cunning and determination.

Packed with pitched battles and blood feuds and told throughout with wit and high spirits, Bengtsson’s book is a splendid adventure that features one of the most unexpectedly winning heroes in modern fiction.

Egil’s Saga

Egil’s Saga
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Egil’s Saga is the 10th-century Nordic equivalent of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Translated from the Icelandic with
an introduction, notes and an essay, this is the first time Eddison’s version of this epic heroic saga has been made available as a digital book.

The saga of Egil, son of Grim the Bald, tells the exciting tale of a medieval warrior-poet and his many Viking adventures. Challenged by his ugly appearance and haunted by rumours that his grandfather was a werewolf, Egil devotes himself to Odin, god of kings, warriors and poets, and determines to avenge his father’s exile from Norway. With action ranging across Iceland and Scandinavia down to Scotland and England, Egil’s thrilling encounters include kings, sorcerers, berserkers and outlaws, as the story follows his transformation from youthful savagery to mature wisdom.

Sometimes considered the greatest of the Icelandic sagas, Egil’s Saga is the 10th-century Nordic equivalent of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Eddison’s acclaimed translation, published in 1930, has been long unavailable, and demonstrates the author’s amazing capacity for evocative and erudite language. It reflects the swift dramatic terseness and vivid character-drawing which made the saga style in prose narrative such an enduring model for modern historical and fantasy literature, and his meticulous translation includes elaborate notes and annotations.

The Complete Zimiamvia trilogy (Zimiamvia)

The Complete Zimiamvia trilogy (Zimiamvia)
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The classic epic trilogy of parallel worlds, admired by Tolkien and the great prototype for The Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy fiction. Also includes The Worm Ouroboros.

When Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was published, reviewers saw that there was only one author with whom he could legitimately be compared: Eric Rucker Eddison (1882-1945). He met both Tolkien and Lewis, and was cited by both as the game-changer in fantastic literature and a key influence on them. His two principal works – the sprawling and opulent fantasy trilogy Zimiamvia (which has been favourably compared to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast) and the earlier hedonistic The Worm Ouroboros (a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany) – put Eddison up among the masters of his craft. Admirers including Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg and Clive Barker have all lined up to praise his books.

This complete eBook edition includes the three books of the Zimiamvia Trilogy – Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate, together with the epic prelude novel The Worm Ouroboros.

Swain’s Vengeance (The Saga of Swain the Viking)

Swain's Vengeance (The Saga of Swain the Viking)
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“All who admit friendship for Frakork and Olvir are likewise my enemies. Let me hear of such and they shall feel the edge of my sword and the burning of lighted brands such as those with which Olvir fired my father’s skalli at Dungalsbae and drove both him and Valthiof, my brother, forth to die upon the spears of a hundred men.”

Swain Olaf’s son is a man who will let nothing stand in the way of his goals. And no goal is more important to him than avenging his father and brother, who were done to death by the despicable Olvir Rosta and his grandmother, the witch-woman Frakork. If that means Swain must depose a Jarl to achieve vengeance, then so be it!

As acclaimed author Howard Andrew Jones writes in the introduction, “Arthur D. Howden Smith based Swain on material found in the later portions of the Orkneyinga saga. If you think that means Smith was recounting dry history, you’re in for a rude surprise. These tales are based on the recollections of a warrior culture, and Swain’s stories are rich with deeds of daring and cleverness and are absolutely drenched in warfare and violence, from the very first pages.”