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- The Midwich Cuckoos
John Wyndhamstandalone novel1957
similar byscience fictioneeriemid 20th century
The Midwich Cuckoos is a 1957 science fiction novel written by the English author John Wyndham. It tells the tale of an English village in which the women become pregnant by brood parasitic aliens. The book has been praised by many critics, including the dramatist Dan Rebellato, who called it "a searching novel of moral ambiguities", and the novelist Margaret Atwood, who called the book Wyndham's "chef d'œuvre". The book has been adapted for film, radio, and television.
- Way Station
Clifford D. Simakstandalone novel1963
similar byscience fictionmid 20th century+1 more
The human operator of a transfer station for aliens traveling between planets, kept secret from the human race, deals with discovery by the US government and interplanetary political crisis, as well as his own emotional issues.
- Ring Around the Sun
Clifford D. Simakstandalone novel1953
similar byscience fictionmid 20th century+1 more
Ring Around the Sun is a science fiction novel by American writer Clifford D. Simak. Its anti-urban and pro-agrarian sentiments are typical of much of Simak's work.
- Eye in the Sky
Philip K. Dickstandalone novel1957
similar byscience fictioneeriemid 20th century
Eight visitors touring a particle-accelerator facility are caught in a catastrophic malfunction, a collapsing platform, a burst of radiation, that leaves them all unconscious. When protagonist Jack Hamilton, an engineer recently fired over Red Scare-era suspicions about his wife's politics, comes to, the world around him is subtly, then not so subtly, wrong: physics bends to fit one fellow victim's religious convictions, then to another's paranoid fears, as the group cycles through what turn out to be shared hallucinations built from each other's private belief systems. Philip K. Dick's early novel about how differently people actually see the same world.
- The Triffids
series3 books1951
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John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951) opens with a meteor-shower-like event that leaves most of Britain's population blind, throwing civilization into collapse just as triffids, an aggressive and mobile species of poisonous plant, become free to hunt the helpless survivors. Simon Clark's authorized sequel The Night of the Triffids (2001) picks up a generation later, narrated by the original protagonist's son as he confronts a new triffid-dominated world, and John Whitbourn's The Age of the Triffids extends the shared setting further still. Together the three novels form a loose post-apocalyptic trilogy built on Wyndham's original premise rather than a tightly plotted single story.
- The Body Snatchers
Jack Finneystandalone novel1955
similar byscience fictioneeriemid 20th century
The Body Snatchers is a science fiction horror novel by American writer Jack Finney, originally serialized in Collier's magazine in November–December 1954 and published in book form the following year.
- The Cosmic Puppets
Philip K. Dickstandalone novel1957
similar byscience fictioneeriemid 20th century
The Cosmic Puppets is a science fiction novel by American author Philip K. Dick, published in 1957. It is a novelization of a short story initially published in the December 1956 issue of Satellite Science Fiction. The Cosmic Puppets was first published as a novel by Ace Books as one half of Ace Double D-249, bound dos-à-dos with Sargasso of Space by Andrew North .The story follows Ted Barton, a man who returns to his childhood hometown of Millgate, Virginia, only to discover that it has been erased from all official records and is now a surreal place where the laws of reality are distorted. Barton learns that the town is a battleground in a cosmic struggle between two ancient beings, a conflict that has twisted the fabric of his home and the memories of its inhabitants.
- The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick
series11 books1987
completed
similar byscience fiction+2 more
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a collection of 118 science fiction stories by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published by Underwood-Miller in 1987 as a five volume set. See Philip K. Dick bibliography for information about the mass market reprints.
- Twilight Zone
universe40 books1960
Start hereStories from the Twilight Zone · Start here
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Picture, if you will, an ordinary person on an ordinary afternoon: a tired salesman, a frightened child, a man who wants only to be left alone. Somewhere between the streetlight and the front door, the rules quietly change. This is the Twilight Zone — not a place on any map but a middle ground between light and shadow, science and superstition, the pit of our fears and the summit of our knowledge. There is no continuing saga here, no cast to follow across the years. There is only the door, and the parable waiting on the far side of it. What the shelf holds is Rod Serling's anthology given the permanence of print. Serling turned his own teleplays into prose, the collections that open with Stories from the Twilight Zone, and the scripts survive alongside them — his and Richard Matheson's, the two hands that set the show's pulse. Around that core gather the story-collections of Walter B. Gibson, the volumes of new tales assembled by Carol Serling, standalone novels, and paired reissues: dozens of self-contained pieces, many writers under one banner. Read one or read forty. Each closes its own circle. The machinery is always the same and never predictable — a reasonable premise, a moral squeeze, a final turn that lands like a tap on the shoulder, sometimes cruel, sometimes merciful, always earned. Beneath the twist runs Serling's true subject: ordinary conscience under strain — prejudice, vanity, loneliness, the wish to go back. Begin where he began, with his own Stories from the Twilight Zone, then follow Matheson. There is no order to keep. You unlock this door with the key of imagination.
- Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarkestandalone novel1953
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Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows a peaceful alien invasion of Earth by mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
- Quicksand
John Brunnerstandalone novel1967
similar byscience fictioneeriemid 20th century
A British psychiatrist in a deadening job and a deadening marriage gets a mysterious patient; a petite young woman who speaks an unrecognizable language and is unfamiliar with the common objects, sights, and behaviors of normal life, yet who is able to quickly and easily cripple or kill a large man with her bare hands when she feels threatened. He feels more than professional concern for the woman, who he believes is not actually mentally ill but is in fact a more unusual case.
- Twilight Zone Collections
series8 books1960
part of Twilight Zone
similar byeeriemid 20th centuryscience fiction
- More Than Human
Theodore Sturgeonstandalone novel1953
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More Than Human is a 1953 science fiction fix-up novel by American writer Theodore Sturgeon. It is a revision and expansion of his 1952 novella Baby Is Three, which is bracketed by two additional parts written for the novel, "The Fabulous Idiot" and "Morality". It won the 1954 International Fantasy Award, which was also given to works in science fiction. It was additionally nominated in 2004 for a "Retro Hugo" award for the year 1954. Science fiction critic and editor David Pringle included it in his book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels.
- Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea
Adam Robertsstandalone novel2014
similar byscience fictioneeriemid 20th century
"Adam Roberts revisits Jules Verne's classic novel in a collaboration with the illustrator behind a recent ... edition of The Hunting of the Snark. It is 1958 and France's first nuclear submarine, Plongeur, leaves port for the first of its sea trials. On board, gathered together for the first time, are one of the Navy's most experienced captains and a tiny skeleton crew of sailors, engineers, and scientists. The Plongeur makes her first dive and goes down, and down and down. Out of control, the submarine plummets to a depth where the pressure will crush her hull, killing everyone on board, and beyond"--
- Dr. Patrick Cory
series3 books1942
completed
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Donovan's Brain (1942) is one of the earliest and most influential 'brain in a jar' stories: Dr. Patrick Cory keeps the disembodied brain of a dead millionaire alive in his lab, only to find it telepathically overriding his own mind and will. Curt Siodmak revisited the same premise and character in Hauser's Memory, where Cory absorbs a dying spy's memories through an experimental serum, with consequences of his own. Both were adapted for film and television, and the 1942 original is often cited as a formative influence on later mad-science and body-horror fiction.
- The Lathe of Heaven
Ursula K. Le Guinstandalone novel1971
similar byscience fictioneerie
The Lathe of Heaven is a 1971 science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, first serialized in the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. It won the 1972 Locus Award for Best Novel and was a finalist for the 1971 Nebula Award for Best Novel and 1972 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Two television film adaptations were released: the PBS production, The Lathe of Heaven (1980), and Lathe of Heaven (2002), a remake produced by the A&E Network.
- The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchonstandalone novel1966
similar bymid 20th century+2 more
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by the American author Thomas Pynchon. It was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. on April 27, 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies. One of these companies, Thurn and Taxis, actually existed; operating from 1806 to 1867, Thurn and Taxis was the first private firm to distribute postal mail. Like most of Pynchon's writing, The Crying of Lot 49 is often described as postmodernist literature. Time magazine included the book in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
- The Drowned World
J. G. Ballardstandalone novel1962
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The Drowned World is a 1962 science fiction novel by J. G. Ballard. It first appeared in shortened form in the January 1962 issue of the UK edition of Science Fiction Adventures and was published in book form later that year by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London; an American edition followed from Berkley Medallion. Critics have grouped The Drowned World with Ballard's early science-fiction novels as part of an "ambiguous apocalypse" sequence that also includes The Drought and The Crystal World, from the period in which he was developing the ideas he described as "inner space". Set in a future in which solar radiation has melted the polar ice caps and transformed London into a flooded tropical lagoon, the novel follows biologist Robert Kerans as he becomes increasingly drawn toward the altered environment rather than toward restoring the old social order.
- Time Out of Joint
Philip K. Dickstandalone novel1959
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Time Out of Joint is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in novel form in the United States in 1959. An abridged version was also serialised in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds Science Fiction in several installments from December 1959 to February 1960.
- Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delanystandalone novel1975
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Dhalgren is a 1975 science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It features an extended trip to and through Bellona, a fictional city in the American Midwest cut off from the rest of the world by an unknown catastrophe. It is number 33 on the 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction list.
- The Santaroga Barrier
Frank Herbertstandalone novel1968
similar byscience fictioneerie
Santaroga seemed to be nothing more than a prosperous farm community. But there was something . .. different . .. about Santaroga. Santaroga had no juvenile delinquency, or any crime at all. Outsiders found no house for sale or rent in this valley, and no one ever moved out. No one bought cigarettes in Santaroga. No cheese, wine, beer or produce from outside the valley could be sold there. The list went on and on and grew stranger and stranger.Maybe Santaroga was the last outpost of American individualism. Maybe they were just a bunch of religious kooks... Or maybe there was something extraordinary at work in Santaroga. Something far more disturbing than anyone could imagine. (Publisher's blurb)
