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 Big Time
A war rages beyond space and time in this Hugo Award–winning “extraordinary tour de force” from the acclaimed Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy (A Reader’s Guide to Science Fiction).
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.
In addition to the Hugo, Nebula, Derleth, Lovecraft, and World Fantasy Awards, Fritz Leiber received the Grand Master of Fantasy (Gandalf) Award, the Life Achievement Lovecraft Award, and the Grand Master Nebula Award.
A Crystal Age
W. H. Hudson’s trailblazing story of a pastoral utopia that harbors a dark secret.
After a landslide, Smith awakens groggy and confused. The landscape around him has changed dramatically. He wanders through the countryside, searching for any semblance of civilization, until a family takes him in. As he recounts what happened to him and where he came from, it dawns on Smith that he has somehow left his own world behind and awoken somewhere entirely new.
What Smith finds is a gorgeous utopian vision of a peaceful world made real. Humans live in accordance with nature, respectful of the land and animals, untethered by technology. The cause of this new order is an alternate hierarchy of humanity that Smith must learn to adhere to—or face the consequences.
As he integrates into this foreign society, Smith finds himself falling for the daughter of the house. But when he tries to tell her, he realizes the most important difference between his former world and his new one: Romantic love no longer exists.
The First Men in the Moon
A pair of unlikely explorers journey to the moon in this imaginative tale of science and adventure from the author of The War of the Worlds.
Hounded by creditors, Mr. Bedford retreats to a remote English village, where he meets the eccentric Mr. Cavor. Though he may not look it, Cavor is a genius and one of the world’s greatest inventors. His breakthrough is cavorite, an astonishing new substance manufactured from helium that is not bound by the laws of gravity. Bedford immediately sees the business potential of Cavor’s creation, reckoning a ship made of cavorite could take him the moon—the first step on a path to riches beyond his wildest dreams.
When Bedford and Cavor set out for the moon in a cavorite sphere, they find the Earth’s satellite to be more wonderful than either of them ever imagined. But they soon discover they are not alone on the lush lunar surface—and the natives are not exactly friendly.
A thrilling adventure story that offers fascinating insights into the nature of mankind, The First Men in the Moon is a timeless classic from “the father of modern science fiction.”
The Great God Pan
The groundbreaking novella that gave rise to science fiction’s original space hero, Buck Rogers.
In 1927, World War I veteran Anthony Rogers is working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation investigating strange phenomena in an abandoned coal mine when suddenly there’s a cave-in. Trapped in the mine and surrounded by radioactive gas, Rogers falls into a state of suspended animation . . . for nearly five hundred years.
Waking in the year 2419, he first saves the beautiful Wilma Deering from attack and then discovers what has befallen his country: The United States has descended into chaos after Asian powers conquered the world with advanced weaponry centuries before. All that’s left are ragtag gangs battling for survival against their brutal overlords.
But when Rogers shows them how to band together and fight for more than mere survival, he sparks a revolution that will decide the fate of the future world.
