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Amongst the gorse and the heathers of his native highlands, Skelter the mountain hare enjoyed an idyllic life: browsing and gambolling; taking in the superb scenery and making female friends, including the beautiful Rushie. Then one day Skelter’s life of ease came to an abrupt end. Netted and captured, he and several other hares are transported hundreds of miles, to the strange lands of the south, destined for the cruel sport of hare coursing. Amidst a hell of shouting men and howling greyhounds, Skelter witnesses a nightmare, before making a miraculous escape.


Alone, stranded in a landscape he does not understand, Skelter must learn to survive, despite the hostility and distrust of the local hares and other natural hazards.


By far the most horrifying peril that faces Skelter is the florge: a vast, flying monster which is terrorising the countryside, killing indiscriminately.


Raised in isolation by a man, thousands of miles from his native habitat, Bubba is a killer more terrifying than any natural creature: for he believes himself human. Can one small mountain hare survive against such a monster?

After roving through space for centuries, a starship unburdens its cargo of human embryos on a harsh new world. They quickly grow to maturity in the ship’s artificial womb. A lifetime of Earth memories is programmed into their dreams.
But before their indoctrination is complete, an alien intruder infiltrates and destroys the system, and the reason for the odyssey is never learned.
Now, on a verdant island surrounded by quicksand, Othman, wanderer, dreamer, and self-proclaimed leader of the Earthling band, builds a mighty bridge to span the ocean of molten mud that keeps them from the world beyond.
He has yet to face the deadly toll his quest will take on the delicate ecology of the planet – or the revolt of his beautiful, strong-willed wife, Silandi. And he has yet to discover the hidden knowledge locked deep within their hearts.

Earth has been under alien domination by strange winged creatures for centuries. They keep the population severely limited and isolated; humans may only meet at occasional matings. The account of the resistance to the aliens, set largely in a beautifully evoked Oceania, is taut, superbly written, and given a very surprising final twist.

Banished for the sin of mercy, Severian, one of the ancient guild of Torturers, flees from exile. In a mountain wilderness

Severian, the disgraced apprentice torturer, has reached his place of exile – Thrax, the city of Windowless Rooms, where he must take up his post as Lictor, executioner and torturer. However, he flees the city and heads into the mountains. There he meets the Alzabo, in whom those eaten seem to live on, adopts a son only to lose him in battle and discharges an old debt to vengeance. As his exile takes stranger and stranger turns, he encounters fanged aliens who hide behind masks of beauty, and meets the mysterious Dr Talos . . .

The torturer Severian continues his journey of exile to the city Thrax, carrying with him the ancient executioner’s sword and the Claw of the Conciliator, a gem of extraterrestrial power and beauty which no one man is meant to possess . . .

Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1981

So begins one of the most celebrated stories in fantasy literature . . . packed full of mystery, deep themes and incredible prose, meet Severian the Torturer and follow him on his journey across the great world of Urth

Severian is a torturer, born to the guild and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him . . . until he falls in love with one of his victims, a beautiful young noblewoman.

Her excruciations are delayed for some months and, out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate. For a torturer, there is no more unforgivable act. In punishment he is exiled from the guild and his home city to the distant metropolis of Thrax with little more than Terminus Est, a fabled sword, to his name.

Along the way he has to learn to survive in a wider world without the guild – a world in which he has already made both allies and enemies. And a strange gem is about to fall into his possession, which will only make his enemies pursue him with ever-more determination . . .

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel, 1981
Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1982

Readers can’t stop reading The Shadow of the Torturer:

‘Full of rich characters and great imagination’ Mark Lawrence, author of Red Sister

‘A dark jewel . . . He has a mastery of language not often seen in fantasy writing . . . Couple this with an original and unique, highly imaginative and complex worldbuilding and the high praise is warranted‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘This is a picaresque fantasy with a difference, for our hero Severian is no wide-eyed country boy from the shire, but an apprentice torturer, thoroughly schooled in his trade’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘There are certain books that can be considered life-changing experiences. Gene Wolfe is an author who has written one of those for me’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
‘The Book of the New Sun Tetralogy is one of the great achievements in science fiction and is a MUST READ for fans of the genre. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘In addition to being unique in style, The Shadow of the Torturer is a gorgeous piece of work: passionate storytelling (heart-wrenching in places), fascinating insights into nature and the human condition, beautiful prose’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Genre fiction at its finest. Original, difficult and well-crafted, it is easy to see how Wolfe is regarded as a writer’s writer’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The Lyonesse sequence evokes the Elder Isles, is a baroque land of pre-Arthurian myth now lost beneath the Atlantic, where powerful sorcerers, aloof faeries, stalwart champions, and nobles eccentric, magnanimous, and cruel pursue intrigue among their separate worlds . . .

Prince Aillas of Troicinet is betrayed on his first diplomatic voyage and cast into the sea. Before he redeems his birthright, he must pass the breadth of Hybras Isle as prisoner, vagabond, and slave, an acquaintance of faeries, wizards, and errant knights, and lover to a sad and beautiful girl whose fate sets his bitter rivalry with the tyrant Casmir, King of Lyonesse.


(First published in 1983)

A genetic experiment gone wrong produces a tiny pink “worm” that matures into a beautiful woman whose superhuman powers propel her toward a unique destiny.

An international agency, COSMOS, is in charge of space exploration in the not very distant future. Odd forms of life have been discovered on Mars, Venus, and Jupiter; there may be a life form on Mercury; and finally something utterly mystifying is discovered on the moon. Three astronauts land and examine an installation that all three perceive as radically different – one sees a heap of gold, one a fort bristling with guns, one a space platform and space craft. They return to Earth with some crystals picked up at the mystery site.

All three soon produce children – the moon children, gifted, precocious, and seemingly damned by the crystals their fathers had handled. Two are eerily beautiful, the third a grotesque monster. And the three soon discover that they are Earth’s hope for survival, as interplanetary invasion brings overwhelming alien forces to bear on mankind.

Power-Greedy.

Men wished to rule the world, but one man stood in their way. Peter Duncan came from the planet Mattrain – but who was he? Was he human? If so, whence came his vastly superior intellect and technical knowledge? These were mysteries the Administration feared – because they could not find the answer to them. Too late they saw danger. For, by then, Peter Duncan had escaped and taken refuge in the Devastated Areas, from which he continued his fight to save the human race from final utter destruction. But then, he had a reason. Martha of the chestnut hair and striking beauty, who alone knew his secret and who taught him how to love.

Trullion – World 2262 of the Alastor Cluster – was a beautiful waterworld of fens, mists, idyllic islands set in clear oceans whose teeming richness provided food for the taking. The Trill were a carefree, easy-living race. But violence entered their lives during the raids of the galactic pirates known as the Starmenters. And there was also the planetwide game of hussade, when the Trill’s ferocious passion for gambling drove them to risk all – even life itself – on the hazardous water-chessboard gaming fields. Their prize? The virginal body of the beautifu sheirl-maiden, the body any Trill is willing to die for.

The corridors of time connect the ages to each other. Through them, one can travel backwards and forwards over the history of man. But rival factions have waged war for centuries: the gates onto time are bitterly fought for and jealously guarded. Malcolm Lockridge is a modern American swept into the past by the beautiful and mysterious Storm Darroway, the lithe, glowing Goddess of her people. Malcolm is an ordinary man of today, caught up in a time war beyond his comprehension.

The barbarians in their long ships waiting at the edge of the Galaxy waited for the ancient Terran Empire to fall, while two struggled to save it: ex-Admiral McCormac, forced to rebel against a corrupt Emperor, and Starship Commander Flandry, the brilliant young officer who served the Imperium even as he scorned it.

Trapped between them was the woman they both loved, but couldn’t share: the beautiful Kathryn – whose single word could decide the fate of a billion suns.

He could see from above that this planet was inhabited. He emerged from the ship – to find himself lassoed and captured by a beautiful redhead mounted on a strange, bird-like creature. That was the first shock; the second was to realise that this world of women looked on him as a monster. For while the women of Atlantis had waited for the coming of the Men, they were certain that this creature who had landed on their planet could not possibly be a man.

As a young boy, Laurie Linton encountered a strange apparition: a ghostly man who urgently mouthed a message:
KILL MAGOBION!
Years later, as a member of the UN Narcotics Security Agency, Linton and the beautiful Carol Kennedy were assigned a special duty: investigation of a mysterious drug which endowed its addicts with superhuman powers.
Now, that investigation leads Linton and Carol into a bewildering maze where past and future slide by each other at terrifying speed…where international peace teeters in the balance…and where all blues point to the top-secret Ministry of Internal Security and its prestigious, powerful leader – COLONEL PIERS MAGOBION.

THE DAUGHTER OF KAIFENG

The world was haunted. Every sunset the natives went home, locked their doors, and pulled down the window blinds. Ghosts didn’t scare Kennedy. As an agent of FATE, it took more than superstition to shake him. But Epidoris was the real thing. Monsters did appear in the darkness, people did vanish at night – a whole MALACA barracks had vanished, garrison, weapons and building.

That’s what brought Kennedy to Epidoris. That and one thing more – a creature of the infamous Dr. Kaifeng had turned up. A beautiful woman, a princess she called herself – but Kennedy had seen her before – lying in a processing vat on a Kaifeng planetoid of warped genetics. Between the scientific machinations of the galaxy’s most perverted mind and the spectral realities of a disputed world there had to be a meaning that boded no good for Terra – and that’s where Kennedy came in.

From the opening reared a head, wide, flat, huge. Below it stretched a body beautiful with iridescent scales of gold edged with ruby. Nictitating membranes lifted over enormous eyes, deep, limpid pools of ancient wisdom, catching and reflecting the light of the miniature sun, turning the glowing orb into a scatter of stars shimmering in an ebon sea. From open jaws a forked tongue flickered with a soft susurration. Its scent was dry, acrid, tinged with that of living fur on a summer’s day. The head rose higher, swaying over the three men on the ledge, the sinuous length of the body almost filling the passage through which it had come. From it radiated an impression of incredible age.

“A serpent,” whispered Thagamista. “A creature from the beginning of time. Somehow surviving to find this place and feast on those who well here. It was inevitable they should think it a god.”

THE SLEEPING CITY continues the dynamic saga of the Chronicles of Malkar, E.C. Tubb’s newest fantasy hero!

There should have been soft breezes scented with entrancing perfumes, the soothing warmth of a golden sun, lakes of wine and mountains of grain, trees adorned with fruit and bud and flower, shrubs bearing a profusion of glittering gems. Herbs and spices to provide freedom from pain, a return to youthful zest, an end of aging and decay. Salves and ointments and natural fungi to cure all physical ills. . .

For this was Earth, that planet of legend, the paradise for which all yearned and hungered to find. The world of joy and beauty and riches beyond the wildest dreams.

Instead Earl Dumarest found a landscape of unremitting hostility. Could this really be the fabled home world for which he had spent his entire life searching . . . ?



(First published 2008)

As guardian of the Universe’s freedom from the domination by the Cyclan, Earl Dumarest is ruthlessly hunted by their agent, Cyber Broge, as he searches for the fortune necessary to finance his epic quest for Terra – the planet of his birth. Hunter and fugitive, predator and victim, Earl Dumarest lands on the planet Zakym.

ZAKYM – a cadaverous, twin-sunned world where the spectres of the dead daily claim the lives of the living; a decadent world that threatens to explode with the unparalleled violence of civil war and broken taboos.

ZAKYM – home of the beautiful, haunted Lavinia whose soul is claimed and condemned by a power-crazed madman.

Both Lavinia and her planet are doomed until a man appears who promises to be their saviour. Dumarest is the only person capable of challenging the terrifying menace of the Cyclan and the terrors of Zakym. But can even he triumph against such foes?




(First published 1977)

Earl Dumarest, now a vanquished and captive mercenary, is offered the choice of surrender to the fearsome Cyclan or the chance of freedom by the beautiful and ruthless Lady Delphine. The risks are terrifying – but has Dumarest a choice?

Intent on finding the legendary world of Terra – Earth – the planet of his birth; pursued by the brilliant and ruthless megalomaniac race, the Cyclan, whose secret key to Galactic domination only he possesses; trapped on a plague ship hurtling through a universe determined to destroy it, and captained by a madman – Earl Dumarest is tempted by the irresistible but fatal promise of Delphine.

The choice is simple – to abandon his dreams or perish by them, just as they promise fulfilment.



(First published 1976)

Cyber Prime surveyed the domains of his vast scattered empire with trepidation. Central Intelligence had ruled the empire in the past. Now he knew that this gigantic computer was degenerating, breaking up after years of use.

Only one man could save them: Earl Dumarest, a lonely space traveller engaged on a long quest to find his birth planet, Earth. The Cybers must find and intercept him.

But before the Cybers discover Dumarest, they encounter Eloise, a beautiful seductress who drives logic from their minds . . .



(First published 1975)

A collection of Silverberg’s best short fiction, as selected by the author.

The 1950s: The Road to Nightfall, The Macauley Circuit, Sunrise on Mercury, Warm Man.

The 1960s: To See the Invisible Man, Flies, Passengers, Nightwings, Sundance.

The 1970s: Good News from the Vatican, Capricorn Games, Born with the Dead, Schwartz Between the Galaxies.

The 1980s: The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve, The Pope of the Chimps, Needle in a Timestack, Sailing to Byzantium, Enter a Soldier. Later, Enter Another.

The 1990s: Hunters in the Forest, Death Do Us Part, Beauty in the Night.

The 2000s: The Millennium Express, With Caesar in the Underworld.

Edward Davis was a promising rookie in the Time Service. He had made jumps into the past – two, three, even six centuries – but nothing could prepare him for a leap of thirty-five centuries, all the way back to Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt.

In the blink of an eye, he found himself in a world of temples and tombs, pharaohs and pyramids, jackal-headed gods, mummies and talking beetles. In the ancient city of Thebes, Davis must rescue two members of the Service lost in time.

Taken in by a mysterious temple priestess and befriended by a beautiful Egyptian slave girl, Davis is sent to the City of the Dead to learn the trade of embalming. But as the hour of his scheduled return to his own time approaches, Edward Davis must come to grips with the truth behind the fate of his comrades – and the seductive allure of ancient Egypt.

‘You will be a King, and Great King, and then you will Die, and you may not avoid that destiny, try as you may¿’

Two-thirds god, one-third human, Gilgamesh is a giant among men and a formidable warrior, even as a boy. When his father the king of Rurk dies, Gilgamesh is forced into exile by the newly crowned Dumuzi, jealous of his prowess and fearful of his intentions.

In neighbouring Kis his fighting skills are honed to perfection, and when in time Dumuzi dies, Gilgamesh returns to be proclaimed king by the wily priestess Inanna, goddess of beauty. Together they rule Uruk, and prosperity descends upon the land.

However, the kingship is not enough to satisfy Gilgamesh’s gargantuan appetite for adventure, and his boredom is only relieved by the coming of Enkidu, a strange wild man who proves the king’s equal in combat. The two become closer than brothers, but when Gilgamesh incurs the wrath of Inanna, the gods conspire to tear them apart, and for Gilgamesh all that remains is his search for immortality.

In retelling the legend of the great Sumerian monarch, Robert Silverberg brings all his superb storytelling powers to a mesmerising tale of ambition, power and obsession, against the background of an ancient and fearsome world.