Free Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Read in July 2024

In Flatland, the more sides a man has, the more powerful he is. Triangles are laborers and soldiers. Squares and pentagons are middle-class doctors and lawyers. Hexagons are nobility. Women, however, are straight lines, incapable of advancement in a two-dimensional world. Everything in Flatland is clear-cut and orderly, until the day an average citizen—a Square—dreams of a land of three dimensions. If three dimensions are possible, why not four? Or one? Soon, the Square’s provocative imagination and corresponding adventures threaten to turn the whole of Flatland against him.

First published in 1884, two decades before Einstein’s theory of relativity defined time as the fourth dimension, Edwin Abbott’s Flatland is both a prescient exploration of the unseen and a delightful skewering of Victorian social strictures.

The classic fantasy about a young man who travels through a mystical reflecting glass into a hidden world.

Mr. Vane spots the mysterious old man while reading in his family’s expansive library. His interest piqued, he follows the man up to the attic, where he finds a tall and dusty mirror. In its rather unremarkable glass, the reflection of the world behind him slowly melts away to reveal a sweeping country of moors and hills framed by the tops of faraway mountains. Enchanted by the sight, Vane steps through the mirror and is transported to a dreamlike land where myriad perils and adventures await.

With the old man, Mr. Raven, as his guide, Vane travels through the Evil Wood, where innocent children frolic in the day and dead men battle at night. He visits the ominous city Bulika, whose people live in silent fear of a menace roaming the streets. Each chapter building on the last, Lilith follows Vane to a final and universal truth in a stunning allegory of life, death, and redemption.

One of the first novels about interplanetary travel, A Honeymoon in Space takes readers on a journey across the solar system.

Lenox, the Earl of Redgrave, has made the greatest scientific discovery in the history of the world: a flying ship with the power to break free of Earth’s gravity and take to the stars. But before he uses it to expand humanity’s understanding of the universe, he has some personal business to attend to—namely, wooing an old flame.

The lady in question is Zaidie, the daughter of Lenox’s colleague Professor Rennick. With Zaidie about to be forced into a loveless marriage, Lenox knows he must do something drastic. He steals her away and takes her out of this world—literally. Griffith’s accounts of other planets are spectacularly engaging—from subterranean civilizations on the moon to the warlike Martians to the musical inhabitants of Venus. This remarkable adventure makes for a memorable honeymoon indeed.