The End of Eternity (Isaac Asimov, 1955)

The Eternity of the title is an organization and a place which exists outside time. It is staffed by humans (usually male) called Eternals who are recruited from different eras of human history commencing with the twenty-seventh century. The Eternals are capable of traveling “upwhen” and “downwhen” within Eternity and entering the conventional temporal world at almost any point of their choice, apart from a section of the far future which they cannot enter. Collectively they form a corps of Platonic guardians who carry out carefully calculated and planned strategic minimum actions, called Reality Changes, within the temporal world in order to minimise human suffering as integrated over the whole of (future) human history.

A key plot element that emerges quickly as the story unfolds is the relatively static nature of the human societies in the various future centuries, and the repeated failure of space travel in all accessible centuries. We later learn that Twissell (Harlan’s superior) is from "a Century in the 30,000's," yet nothing much is different in that time.

The Chain of Chance (Stanislas Lem, 1975)

A former astronaut is hired by a detective agency to help in an investigation of a case of mysterious deaths. Several victims became mad and committed suicide during their vacation in Napoli, apparently without reason. Due to certain similarities in the circumstances of the deaths the case is assumed to be a serial murder by poisoning, although it is never certain what (if any) real connection exists between the victims.

The Earthsea Quartet (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1968)

A Wizard of Earthsea, first published in 1968, is the first of a series of books written by Ursula K. Le Guin and set in the fantasy world archipelago of Earthsea depicting the adventures of a budding young wizard named Ged. The tale of Ged's growth and development as he travels across Earthsea continues in The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore and is supplemented in Tehanu and The Other Wind.

As a young dragonlord, Ged, whose use-name is Sparrowhawk, is sent to the island of Roke to learn the true way of magic. A natural magician, Ged becomes an Archmage and helps the High Priestess Tenar escape from the labyrinth of darkness. But as the years pass, true magic and ancient ways are forced to submit to the powers of evil and death.

Dark Benediction (Walter M. Miller Jr, 1951-57)

Walter Miller produced many shorter works of fiction of stunning originality and power. His profound interest in religion and his innate literary gifts combined perfectly in the production of such works as 'The Darfstellar', for which he won a Hugo in 1955, 'Conditionally Human', 'I, Dreamer' and 'The Big Hunger', all of which are included in this brilliant and essential collection.

The Cyberiad (Stanislas Lem, 1967)

Trurl and Klapaucius are brilliant (robotic) engineers, called "constructors" (because they can construct practically anything at will), capable of almost God-like exploits. For instance, on one occasion Trurl creates an entity capable of extracting accurate information from the random motion of gas particles, which he calls a"Demon of the Second Kind". He describes the "Demon of the First Kind" as a Maxwell's demon. On another, the two constructors re-arrange stars near their home planet in order to advertise.

The duo are best friends and rivals. When they are not busy constructing revolutionary mechanisms at home, they travel the universe, aiding those in need. Although the characters are firmly established as good and righteous, they take no shame in accepting handsome rewards for their services. If rewards were promised and not delivered, the constructors may even severely punish those who deceived them.

Hellstrom's Hive (Frank Herbert, 1973)

America is a police state, and it is about to be threatened by the most hellish enemy in the world: insects. When the Agency discovered that Dr. Hellstrom’s Project 40 was a cover for a secret laboratory, a special team of agents was immediately dispatched to discover its true purpose and its weaknesses—it could not be allowed to continue. What they discovered was a nightmare more horrific and hideous than even their paranoid government minds could devise. First published in Galaxy magazine in 1973 as “Project 40,” Frank Herbert’s vivid imagination and brilliant view of nature and ecology have never been more evident than in this classic of science fiction.

The Caves of Steel (Isaac Asimov, 1954)

In this novel, Isaac Asimov first introduced Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, who would later become his, and more so his readers', favorite protagonists. They live roughly three millennia in Earth's future, a time when hyperspace travel has been discovered, and a few worlds relatively close to Earth have been colonised — fifty planets known as the "Spacer worlds". The Spacer worlds are rich, have low population density (average population of one hundred million each), and use robot labor very heavily. Meanwhile, Earth is overpopulated (with a total population of eight billion), and strict rules against robots have been passed. The eponymous "caves of steel" are vast city complexes covered by huge metal domes, capable of supporting tens of millions each. The New York City of that era, for example, encompasses present-day New York State, as well as large tracts of New Jersey.

Solaris (Stanislas Lem, 1961)

The novel is about the ultimately futile attempt to communicate with an alien life-form on a distant planet. The planet, called Solaris, is covered with an "ocean" that is really a single organism covering the entire surface. The ocean shows signs of a vast but strange intelligence, which can create physical phenomena in a way that science has difficulty explaining. The alien mind of Solaris is so inconceivably different from human consciousness that all attempts at communication are doomed...

The Hyperion Cantos (Dan Simmons, 1989)

Hyperion is a linked series of stories, all relating to the mysterious planet Hyperion. The stories are told by 7 pilgrims, while in transit to the Time Tombs of Hyperion, which are opening for the first time in centuries, and are normally inaccessible due to the lethal actions of its guardian, The Shrike. The stories are told against a space opera backdrop in which humankind has formed the Hegemony, a far-flung collective of planetary systems linked by farcaster portals, threatened with attack by the Ousters (who are space-evolved humans) as the novel opens. The novel has elements of both science fiction and horror, and covers a wide range of themes such as: time-travel, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, religion, ecology, and the works of John Keats.

I am Legend (Richard Matheson, 1954)

Robert Neville, perhaps the last uninfected man on Earth, finds himself in a paranoid nightmare, surrounded by vampires. By night, the bloodthirsty undead of small-town America besiege his barricaded house. By day, when they hide in shadow and become comatose, Neville gets out his wooden stakes for an orgy of slaughter. He also discovers pseudoscientific explanations, some rather strained, for vampires' fear of light, vulnerability to stakes though not bullets, loathing of garlic, and so on. What gives the story its uneasy power is the gradual perspective shift which shows that by fighting monsters Neville is himself becoming monstrous - not a vampire but something to terrify vampires and haunt their dreams as a dreadful legend from the bad old days.

Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke, 1953)

When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. But, although the Overlords kept themselves hidden from man, they had come to unite a warring world and to offer an end to poverty and crime. When they finally showed themselves it was a shock, but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began. But the children of this utopia dream strange dreams of distant suns and alien planets, and begin to evolve into something incomprehensible to their parents, and soon they will be ready to join the Overmind... and, in a grand and thrilling metaphysical climax, leave the Earth behind.

The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut, 1959)

Winston has flown his craft into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and been converted into pure energy. Materializing only when his waveforms intercept a planet, he only gets home once every 59 days. But at least it's some consolation that he knows all that ever has been and all that ever will be.

From the same author:
Breakfast of Champions
Slaughterhouse 5

Dhalgren (Samuel Delany, 1975)

Whatever has befallen Bellona prevents all radio and television signals, even phone messages, from entering or leaving the city—and may have created a rift in space-time itself: One night the perpetual cloud cover parts to reveal two moons in the darkness. One day a red sun swollen to hundreds of times the size it ordinarily appears rises to terrify the populace, then sets—and the same featureless cloud cover returns, with no hint that it was ever otherwise. Street signs and landmarks shift constantly, while time appears to contract and dilate. Buildings burn for days, but are never consumed, while others burn and later show no signs of damage. Gangs roam the nighttime streets, their members hidden within holographic projections of gigantic insects or mythological creatures. The few people left in Bellona struggle with survival, boredom, and each other. It is their reactions to (and dealings with) the strange happenings and isolation in the city that are the focus of the novel, rather than the happenings themselves.

The story's protagonist is a nameless drifter, nicknamed "Kid" (also referred to as "the Kid", "Kidd", and often just "kid"), who wears only one sandal, shoe, or boot. He appears to be intermittently schizophrenic: Not only does the novel end in schizoid babble (which recurs at various points in the text), he has memories of a stay in a mental hospital, and his perception of the "changes in reality" sometimes differs from that of the other characters. He also suffers from significant memory loss.

Ubik (P. K. Dick, 1969)

The novel takes place in the North American Confederation in 1992. Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician for Glen Runciter's "prudence organization," which employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers (for instance, an anti-telepath can prevent a telepath from reading a client's mind). Runciter runs the company with the assistance of his deceased wife Ella, who is kept in a state of "half-life," a form of cryonic suspension that gives the deceased person limited consciousness and communication ability.

Business magnate Stanton Mick hires Runciter’s company to secure his Lunar facilities from telepaths. Runciter, Chip and others go then to the moon to discover that the assignment is a trap, presumably set by Runciter’s business rival, Ray Hollis, who leads a group of psychics. A bomb explodes killing apprentely Runciter. Chip and his colleagues rush back to Earth to place him in half-life.

Afterwards, the group begins to experience strange shifts in reality. Consumables, such as milk and cigarettes, begin to expire prematurely. Runciter's face appears on coins and they receive strange messages from him, in writing and on television. Group members are found dead, in a gruesome state of decomposition.

Messages from Runciter indicate that Ubik may be their only hope...

More than Human (Theodore Sturgeon, 1953)

An idiot boy, a runaway girl, a severely retarded baby and twin girls with a vocabulary of two words between them. Yet, once they are mysteriously drawn together, this collection of misfits becomes something very, very different from the rest of humanity.

The first part of the novel, "The Fabulous Idiot" narrates the birth of the gestalt. In the beginning, we are introduced to the world of Lone, reffered to as the "Idiot", a young adolescent male with a telepathic ability who lives on the street. He encounters a young lady, Evelyn the first person he has mentally and physically connected with. He is eventually adopted by a poor farmer, but Lone leves after he learns that the farmer's wife is expecting a baby. Lone is soon joined by Janie, a child with a telekinetic gift, and the twins Bonnie and Beanie, who cannot speak but possess the ability to teleport. The farmer's wife dies after giving birth to a "Mongoloid" baby, whom Lone takes. The baby is then on referred to as Baby. Baby has a phenomenal mental capacity and thinks almost like a computer. Baby helps Lone build an anti-gravity generator. Together, Lone, Janie, the twins and Baby form what will be later called the homo gestalt.

The second part of the novel is "Baby is Three", which occurs several years after The Fabulous Idiot. The character Gerry Thompson is introduced, a mentally disturbed and abused street urchin. Gerry is shown having a psychotherapy session, trying to piece his memory back together. We learn that Gerry was taken in by Lone after being close to death. Lone was killed in the woods, and Gerry subsequently became the leader of the gestalt. They were soon adopted by Evelyn's sister, Alicia. They were educated and fed under her care. Soon, however, Gerry learned that domestication and normalization had weakened their gestalt. He killed Alicia, and the group returned to living alone in the woods. We learn at the end of this section that Gerry has gained Lone's telepathic abilities, making his psychiatrist forget what he had told him.

The third and concluding part of the novel is "Morality". Again, it occurs several years after the previous part. This section of the novel tackles what the gestalt is missing to complete its evolution. The character of Lt. Hip Barrows is introduced, a man who worked for the air force who now suffers from memory loss. He is taken care of by Janie, who nurses him back to health. He soon remembers what had happened in the past seven years. He discovered some odd effects while he was working for the air force, and was led to discover the anti-gravity machine that was built by Lone. Gerald mentally attacked Hip, driving him to a mental breakdown and amnesia, after discovering that Hip would reveal this discovery. Hip confronts Gerry, and becomes the last part of the gestalt, its conscience.

A similar book by Sturgeon: The Dreaming Jewels

Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny, 1967)

Imagine a distant world where gods walk as men, but wield vast and hidden powers. Here they have made the stage on which they build a subtle pattern of alliance, love, and deadly enmity. Are they truly immortal? Who are these gods who rule the destiny of a teeming world? Their names include Brahma, Kali, Krishna and also he who was called Buddha, the Lord of Light, but who now prefers to be known simply as Sam. The gradual unfolding of the story, how the colonization of another planet became a re-enactment of Eastern mythology, is one of the great imaginative feats of modern science fiction.

The Ringworld (Larry Niven, 1970)

In the year 2850, four explorers (two human and two aliens) explore a mysterious "ringworld": an enormous, artificial, ring-shaped structure that surrounds a star. When their ship crash lands on the Ringworld, the adventurers must set out to find a way to get back into space. They cross vast distances, witness strangely evolved ecosystems, and interact with some of the Ringworld's varied primitive civilizations. They attempt to discover what caused the Ringworld's inhabitants to lose their technology, and puzzle over who created the Ringworld and why.

The Sheep Look Up (John Brunner, 1968)

An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth. In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods. Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The Trainites, environmental activists and sometime terrorists, want him to lead their movement. The government wants him in jail, or preferably, executed. The media wants a circus. Everyone has a plan for Train, but Train has a plan of his own. This suspenseful science fiction drama is now available to a new generation of enthusiasts.

The Forever War (Joe Haldeman, 1975)

Private William Mandella is a reluctant hero, drafted into an elite military unit to fight in a distant interstellar war against an unknowable and unconquerable alien enemy. Mandella will perform his duties and, as he survives, rise through the ranks, but his greatest test will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the effects of relativity, every time he comes home after a few months' tour of duty, centuries have gone by on Earth, making him and his fellows ever more isolated from the world for whose future they are fighting.

The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)

The solar system is torn by warfare--the discovery of a human capacity to move short distances by the power of mind has blown open the balance of economic power. A marooned spaceman, Gully Foyle, seeks revenge on the ship and crew that left him to rot, and pursues them among hereditary industrialists, sensory-deprived monks, circus freaks and the convicts of the deepest Hell on Earth. Marked by hideous facial tattoos, and haunted by his own flaming double, there is nothing that Foyle will not do-- and he is pursued by a selection of Furies as highly coloured as himself. Bester's profligate imagination gives us Dagenham, the radioactive courier, Jizbella, the consummate feminist thief, Robin, the one-way telepath, Ang-Yeovil, secret master of intelligence and Olivia, the albino who sees infra-red. Streetwise and high-gloss, this is one of the finest of SF classics, full of evocative scenery and much-imitated stylistic gimmicks that for once work perfectly.

The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester, 1953)

Reich is an obsessed monster, haunted by nightmares of a Man With No Face, driven and compelled to murder a rival magnate in a future where crime can't be hidden from police telepaths. The penalty is Demolition: erasure of the criminal's mind. Armed with an ugly weapon holding very special ammo, an insane jingle to mask his thoughts, and the resources of his interplanetary business empire, Reich takes on the world-but, as hinted by clues in chapter 1, he still doesn't understand his own buried motives. It's an impossible problem for police chief Lincoln Powell, one of the hated mind-reading elite - who knows very well whodunnit but can't go to court on telepathic evidence alone. The final confrontations are apocalyptic and unforgettable, with major psychological shockers and a moving aftermath.

Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes, 1966)

Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper, and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes, until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius. But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental tranformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.

Rating: 10/10

A similar book:
More than Human, by T. Sturgeon

Tschai Cycle (City of the Chasch, Servants of the Wankh, The Dirdir, The Pnume) (Jack Vance)

Adam Reith is sent in a small scout ship to investigate a distress signal sent centuries before from the previously unknown planet. The mother ship is destroyed and the rest of the crew killed in a surprise missile attack and Reith is forced to set down on Tschai. The four books describe the attempts of a man of singularly strong will and resource to return to Earth. He overcomes the obstacles of four different alien races and various human groups in his efforts. In the process, he profoundly disrupts several of the societies, human and alien, with which he is forced to deal.

Dying Inside (Robert Silverberg, 1972)

The novel's main character, David Selig, livies in New York City. He was born with a telepathic gift allowing him to read the minds of others and to manipulate people on a psychic level. In his youth, before he learned the true nature of his ability, he called it his 'luck'. Rather than use his superpower for any greater good, however, Selig squanders his gift and uses it only for his own lazy convenience (in one chapter he reads the newspaper through his father's eyes). His power has essentially made him into a lazy bum rather than any kind of superhuman.

As the novel progresses, Selig begins to lose his power and struggles to maintain his grip on reality as his perceptions change and his 'self preservation' ability to get what he wants goes down the drain.

Rating: 9/10

The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1971)

George Orr is a mild and unremarkable man who finds the world a less than pleasant place to live: seven billion people jostle for living space and food. But George dreams dreams which do in fact change reality - and he has no means of controlling this extraordinary power. Psychiatrist Dr William Haber offers to help. At first sceptical of George's powers, he comes to astonished belief. When he allows ambition to get the better of ethics, George finds himself caught up in a situation of alarming peril.

Rating: N/A

The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974)

The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous communication. It is the life work of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the arid anarchist world of Anarres. But Shevek's work is being stifled by jealous colleagues, so he travels to Anarres's sister-planet Urras, hoping to find more liberty and tolerance there. But he soon finds himself being used as a pawn in a deadly political game.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter H. Miller, 1959)

Around the end of the 20th century, industrial civilization was destroyed by a nuclear war, known later as the "Flame Deluge". Subsequently, there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nuclear weapons — the "Simplification". Anyone of learning, and eventually anyone who could even read, was likely to be killed. Illiteracy became almost universal, and books were destroyed en masse.

After surviving the war, Isaac Edward Leibowitz converted to Catholicism and founded a monastic order, the "Albertian Order of Leibowitz", dedicated to preserving knowledge by hiding books, smuggling them to safety (booklegging), memorizing, and copying them.

Fast forward to the 26th century: Brother Francis Gerard of Utah, a novice training to become a monk, is sent out from the Abbey of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz on a Lenten mission of "penance, solitude, and silence" in the desert. While there, Francis encounters a traveler, who points out a rock that might help him complete his shelter. In moving this rock, Francis discovers the entrance to an ancient fallout shelter containing "relics", such as handwritten notes on crumbling memo pads bearing cryptic texts like "pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels–bring home for Emma". Brother Francis soon realizes that these notes appear to have been written by his order's founder, the Blessed Leibowitz himself.

The Man in the High Castle (P. K. Dick, 1962)

The Second World War has been over for 17 years... the Allies have lost it... the African continent is virtually wiped out, the Mediterranean drained to make farmland, the United States divided between the Japanese and the Nazis... The point of divergence between the world of The Man in the High Castle and actual history is the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

In the neutral zone that divides the rival superpowers in America lives Hawthorne Abendsen, the author of an underground best-seller The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Living in the castle of the book's title in the Rockies, Abendsen has consulted the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching, and used his readings of it to write the Science Fiction book, which describes an alternate-reality in which America and the Allies win the Second World War, although stilldifferent from "our" reality. His book has become a popular success, so much so that the Nazi high command want him assassinated.

Does 'reality' lie with him, or is his world just one among many others?

Rating: 9/10

A Scanner Darkly (P.K. Dick, 1977)

Substance D - otherwise known as Death - is the most dangerous drug ever to find its way on to the black market. It destroys the links between the brain's two hemispheres, leading first to disorentation and then to complete and irreversible brain damage. Bob Arctor, undercover narcotics agent, is trying to find a lead to the source of supply, but to pass as an addict he must become a user, and soon, without knowing what is happening to him, he is as dependent as any of the addicts he is monitoring.

Rating: 8/10

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Philip K. Dick, 1965)

Under the authority of the United Nations, humankind has colonized every habitable planet and moon in the solar system. Life for most colonists is physically daunting and psychologically monotonous so the UN must draft individuals to colonize. Most colonists entertain themselves using “Perky Pat” dolls and the multitude of accessories manufactured by Earth-based P.P. layouts.

The company also secretly creates Can-D, an illegal but widely available hallucinogen that allows the user to "translate" into Perky Pat (if the user is female) or her boyfriend Walt (if male). This allows colonists to experience an idealized version of life on Earth in a collective unconscious hallucination. P.P. layouts employs several precogs to determine if possible new Perky Pat accessories will be popular.
Life on Earth is also harsh as the global temperature has risen to a level where one can no longer be outdoors without a personal air conditioning unit.
At the novel’s beginning, renegade industrialist Palmer Eldritch has traveled to the inhabited Proxima Centauri star system in search of a sellable product. He has been gone for a decade...

Rating: 8/10

Time Out of Joint (P. K. Dick, 1959)

Ragle Gumm he lives in 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His unusual occupation consists of repeatedly winning the cash prize in a local newspaper competition, "Where will the little green man be next?" However, everyday objects suddenly disappear leaving behind only a small slip of paper with the name of the object printed on it. There are other mysterious aspects: children exploring the basement of an old, ruined house nearby find a pile of magazines. One features an actress, apparently well-known, who Gumm has never heard of, named Marilyn Monroe.

Gumm gradually begins to suspect that his life is an illusion, constructed around him for the express purpose of keeping him docile and happy. But then what is the real world?

Rating: 8/10

The Collected Short Stories (P. K. Dick)

1st volume: From the previously unpublished "Stability" (1947) to "Nanny" (1952), these are science-fiction stories, fantasies, unique gimmicks and oddities. "Roog" is a dog's-eye view of refuge collectors, "The Preserving Machine" a chill allegory on the nature of change, while the title story concerns a psychic Martian with a remarkable survival mechanism.

Inevitably some of the SF elements have dated, but it doesn't matter: Dick wasn't predicting the future, but shining a bright, sometimes mordant light on the baffling nature of reality. Dick, who said he wrote about "The shock of dysrecognition", was a true original, a writer who expanded to possibilities of fiction. This collection is essential reading for anyone who wants to stretch the horizons of their universe.

2nd volume: 27 stories from August 1952 to April 1953. In this extraordinarily creative period Dick produced a seemingly endless stream of breathtakingly audacious ideas, delving ever deeper into what would become major themes of his career: alienation and the nature of humanity. In "Second Variety" Hendricks and the Russian soldier Tasso fight a desperate battle for survival in a relentless future war against machine foes. The story is a taut, Cold-War-era ancestor of The Terminator. In 1976 Dick wrote "For me 'Human Is' is my credo". Lester is an emotionless workaholic devoted to making poisons for the military. When he returns from Rexor IV a literally changed man his wife faces a unique decision. The final story "Prominent Author" is an ingenious tale of instantaneous transport with strange repercussions in time.

3rd volume: The 23 stories here were written in 1953-4 and show one of science fiction's finest writers in prolific mastery of his craft. While Dick's deep concerns with perception, reality and the nature of humanity frequently recur he rarely fails to bring a fresh idea, a new perspective, a different twist to these very varied stories. Humour is never far away, reflecting his compassion for ordinary people battling often bizarre cosmic conundrums. "Upon the Dull Earth" glitters with dark poetry, a chilling fantasy about a woman who summon angels and changes the world. "The Golden Man", a compelling thriller about a mutant on the run, caused controversy on original publication, the implication that evolution will leave us behind provoking genuine anger. The title of one story, "A World of Talent", is an apt description of the brilliance Dick poured into these amazing stories.

4th volume: This volume covers a wide span, from late 1954 through to 1963, the years during which Dick began writing novels prolifically and his short story output lessened. The title story of this collection has been made into the Steven Spielberg-directed movie of the same name, while "The Days of Perky Pat" inspired one of Dick's greatest works, the novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; The Penultimate Truth grew from "The Mold of Yancy".

5th volume: 25 stories written between 1963 and 1981, just a few months before he died, which include two stories which have been turned into films: the title story, filmed as "Total Recall", and "The Little Black Box", which grew into his masterpiece "Blade Runner".

Stand on Zanzibar (John Brunner, 1968)

There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes ... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style. Employing a dazzling range of literary techniques, John Brunner has created a future world as real as this morning's newspaper - moving, sensory, impressionistic, as jagged as the times it portrays, this book is a real mind stretcher - and yet beautifully orchestrated to give a vivid picture of the world.

Rating: 9/10

From the same author:
The Sheep Look Up

Rendez-vous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke, 1973)

Rama is a vast alien spacecraft that enters the Solar System, A perfect cylinder some fifty kilometres long, spinning rapidly, racing through space, Rama is a technological marvel, a mysterious and deeply enigmatic alien artifact. It is Mankind's first visitor from the stars and must be investigated . . .

Rating: 8/10

Similar books:
Ringworld, by Larry Niven

The Gaean Trilogy by John Varley
The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber

The City and the Stars (Arthur C.Clarke, 1956)

Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shutout the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rules the stars. But then, as legend had it, The invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man. A Unique to break through Diaspar's stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.

Rating: 7/10

The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C. Clarke, 1979)

The story which described the Space Elevator, a "tower" from the earth to geo-stationary orbit, 23 000 miles high. The purpose is to make access to space routine, safe and cheap, and the 22nd century-set novel essentially follows Vannevar Morgan in his quest to complete this monumental project.

2001, A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke, 1968)

When an enigmatic monolith is found buried on the moon, scientists are amazed to discover that it's at least 3 million years old. Even more amazing, after it's unearthed the artefact releases a powerful signal aimed at Saturn. What sort of alarm has been triggered? To find out, a manned spacecraft, the Discovery, is sent to investigate. Its crew is highly trained and they are assisted by a self-aware computer, HAL 9000.

But HAL's programming has been patterned after the human mind a little too well. He is capable of guilt, neurosis, even murder, and he controls every single one of Discovery's components. The crew must overthrow this digital psychotic if they hope to make their rendezvous with the entities that are responsible not just for the monolith, but maybe even for human civilization.

Man Plus (Frederik Pohl, 1976)

Ill luck made Roger Torraway the subject of the Man Plus Programe, but it was deliberate biological engineering which turned him into a monster - a machine perfectly adapted to survive on Mars. For according to computer predictions, Mars is humankind's only alternative to extinction. But beneath his monstrous exterior, Torraway still carries a man's capacity for suffering.

Rating: 8/10

Space Merchants (Frederik Pohl, 1953 & 1984)

It is the 20th Century, an advertisement-drenched world in which the big ad agencies dominate governments and everything else. Now Schoken Associates, one of the big players, has a new challenge for star copywriter Mitch Courtenay. Volunteers are needed to colonise Venus. It's a hellhole, and nobody who knew anything about it would dream of signing up. But by the time Mitch has finished, they will be queuing to get on board the spaceships.

Gateway (Frederik Pohl, 1976)

Gateway opened on all the wealth of the Universe...and on reaches of unimaginable horror. When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!

The Heechee saga:

Book One: Gateway

Book Two: Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

Book Three: Heechee Rendez-vous

Book Four: The Annaly of the Heechee

Rating: 8/10

Consider Phlebas (The Culture Novels, Iain M. Banks)

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

Rating: 8/10

The Culture novels (which can be read independently):
- Consider Phlebas
- The Player of Games
- The Use of Weapons
- Excession
- Inversions
- Look to Windward

American Gods (Neil Gaiman, 2001)

Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, who knows more about Shadow than is possible, warns that a storm is coming, a battle for the very soul of America . . . and they are in its direct path.

Dune (Frank Herbert, 1965)

Planet Arrakis is the source of spice, a mind enhancing drug which makes interstellar travel possible; it is the most valuable substance in the galaxy. When Duke Atreides and his family take up court there, they fall into a trap set by the Duke's bitter rival, Baron Harkonnen. The Duke is poisoned, but his wife and her son Paul escape to the vast and arid deserts of Arrakis, which have given the planet its nickname of Dune. Paul and his mother join the Fremen, the Arrakis natives, ho have learnt to live in this harsh and complex ecosystem. But learning to survive is not enough - Paul's destiny was mapped out long ago and his mother is committed to seeing it fulfilled.

Rating: 10/10

Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)

Looking at the starry night from an English hillside, the unnamed narrator is snatched from his earthly body and flung through space at impossible acceleration, soon outstripping light. He visits other stars, sees other worlds and alien races, a gallery of SF marvels in documentary rather than story form. Fellow disembodied intelligences from the galactic community join our hero, sensing something beyond mere matter and energy: the felt presence of the Star Maker remained unintelligible, even though it increasingly illuminated the cosmos, like the splendour of the unseen sun at dawn.