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!
A Journey in Other Worlds
Focusing on Richard Ayrault, a stockholder of the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company, A Journey in Other Worlds takes readers across the solar system to Jupiter and Saturn. On Jupiter, Astor creates a fantastically outsize world of gushing volcanoes, crashing waterfalls, and otherworldly flora and fauna. In contrast, his Saturn is an introspective and philosophical land. While Ayrault’s journey is the main attraction, it is Astor’s vision of a future with maglev trains, a police force equipped with cameras, and an interconnected network of phones, solar power, wind power, and air travel that will astonish.
A Crystal Age
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.
Youth
Tagging along while his astronomer father visits an industrialist at his vast estate, young Slim is lucky enough to make fast friends with the industrialist’s son, Red, who has recently caught some very strange animals on the property.
The animals seem intelligent enough, and Red recruits Slim to help him train the odd creatures to do circus tricks. But the boys are about to discover their playthings aren’t exactly animals—and they’ve allowed themselves to be caught for a reason . . .
Red Eve
Betrothed to the knight Sir Edmund Acour, Eve learns he may be a traitor to the Crown. However, her suspicions are quashed by a love potion administered to her by Acour, and the two are wed. Only Eve’s longtime lover, merchant’s son Hugh de Cressi, can save her from a bleak fate in this gripping novel set during the tumultuous reign of King Edward III.
