When today’s top science-fiction and fantasy authors look for inspiration, they turn to the classics. We continue reading those same books (year after year) because they stand the test of time. For a limited time, you can download these beloved science fiction and fantasy books for free!
The Poison Belt
The team of explorers from The Lost World reunites to face the end of the world in this adventure by the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Prof. George Challenger has made a troubling discovery: The Earth is about to pass through a belt of poisonous gas. He quickly summons his three friends—Professors Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and Edward Malone—to his home in Sussex with a request to bring tanks of oxygen.
Once the men arrive, Professor Challenger leads them and his wife to a sealed room where they can wait out the crisis and observe the chaos outside. But when the poisonous cloud finally dissipates, there is no telling what they will find…
The Coming Race
The story of the Vril-ya—a superior race of telepathic beings who dwell beneath Earth’s surface and are accidentally discovered by a young man exploring a mine shaft—was written by English writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton has been dismissed by many literary critics (a “bad writing” competition has even been named for him), yet he enjoyed major bestselling success in his day, and he is the originator of several enduring phrases including, from this very book, “pursuit of the almighty dollar.”
The Big Time
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) may be best known as a fantasy writer, but he published widely and successfully in the horror and science fiction fields. One of his major SF creations is the Change War, a series of stories and short novels about rival time-traveling forces locked in a bitter, ages-long struggle for control of the human universe where battles alter history and then change it again until there is no certainty about what might once have happened.
The most notable work of the series is the Hugo Award–winning novel The Big Time, in which doctors, entertainers, and wounded soldiers find themselves treacherously trapped with an activated atomic bomb inside the Place, a room existing outside of space-time. Leiber creates a tense, claustrophobic SF mystery, and a brilliant, unique locked-room whodunit.
The Hour of the Dragon
First published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, The Hour of the Dragon, also known as “Conan the Conqueror,” is Robert E. Howard’s only full-length novel featuring Conan the Barbarian. It is considered by many to be one of the author’s best works.
During Conan’s reign as King of Aquilonia, a group of conspirators plot to depose him in favor of Valerius, heir to Conan’s predecessor, Numedides, whom the swordsman had slain to gain the throne. To accomplish their goal they resort to resurrecting Xaltotun, an ancient sorcerer from the pre-Hyborian empire of Acheron. With Xaltotun’s aid, the Aquilonian army is defeated by that of the rival kingdom and occupied. Conan is captured and slated for execution—until the slave girl Zenobia risks her life to free him. Now, Conan’s quest will take him across the lands of Hyboria.
