Stories
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Explosive and provocative battles fought across the boundaries of time and space—and on the frontiers of the human mind.
Science fiction’s finest have yielded this definitive collection featuring stories of warfare, victory, conquest, heroism, and overwhelming odds. These are scenarios few have ever dared to contemplate, and they include:
“Superiority”: Arthur C. Clarke presents an intergalactic war in which one side’s own advanced weaponry may actually lead to its ultimate defeat.
“Dragonrider”: A tale of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, in which magic tips the scales of survival.
“Second Variety”: Philip K. Dick, author of the short story that became the movie Blade Runner, reaches new heights of terror with his post-apocalyptic vision of the future.
“The Night of the Vampyres”: A chilling ultimatum of atomic proportions begins a countdown to disaster in George R. R. Martin’s gripping drama.
“Hero”: Joe Haldeman’s short story that led to his classic of interstellar combat, The Forever War.
“Ender’s Game”: The short story that gave birth to Orson Scott Card’s masterpiece of military science fiction.
PLUS SEVEN MORE EPIC STORIES
“Among Thieves” by Poul Anderson
“Hangman” by David Drake
“The Last Article” by Harry Turtledove
“The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith
“To the Storming Gulf” by Gregory Benford
“Wolf Time” by Walter Jon Williams
“The Scapegoat” by C. J. Cherryh
Guaranteed to spark the imagination and thrill the soul, these thirteen science fiction gems cast a stark light on our dreams and our darkest fears—truly among the finest tales of the twentieth century.
George R.R. Martin is the author of fifteen novels and novellas, including five volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, several collections of short stories, as well as screenplays for television and feature films. Dubbed ‘the American Tolkien’, George R.R. Martin has won numerous awards including the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is an Executive Producer on HBO’s Emmy Award-winning Game of Thrones, which is based on his A Song of Ice and Fire series. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Over a writing career that spanned three decades, PHILIP K. DICK (1928–1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly, as well as television's The Man in the High Castle. The recipient of critical acclaim and numerous awards throughout his career, including the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards, Dick was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2005, and between 2007 and 2009, the Library of America published a selection of his novels in three volumes. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.
Anne McCaffrey, a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, was one of the world's most beloved and bestselling science fiction and fantasy writers. She is known for her hugely successful Dragonriders of Pern books, as well as the fantasy series that she cowrote with Elizabeth A. Scarborough that began with Acorna: The Unicorn Girl.
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