With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. As an added bonus, the e-book edition of this New York Times bestseller includes an excerpt from Stephenson's new novel, Seveneves.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical

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Soon after the American Civil War, Confederate soldier John Carter joins the gold rush in Arizona. After striking a vein of gold, Carter runs into trouble with the natives of the area. In attempts to evade their pursuit, Carter hides in a cave, unaware of its magical properties. Mysteriously, Carter is transported to Mars, which the planet inhabitants call "Barsoom". When Carter discovers that the gravity difference between Mars and Earth has granted...

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a classic work of early science fiction and one of H. G. Wells' most visionary novels. It recounts the harrowing ordeal of Edward Prendick, an Englishman who survives a shipwreck in the southern Pacific Ocean. Rescued by a man named Montgomery, Prendick finds himself on an island belonging to Dr. Moreau, formerly an eminent physiologist in London who was expelled from his homeland for his cruel vivisection experiments. Prendick...

Astronauts explore an alien spacecraft hurtling toward the sun in this Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel of hard sci-fi. An enormous cylindrical object has entered Earth's solar system on a collision course with the sun. A team of astronauts are sent to explore the mysterious craft, which the denizens of the solar system name Rama. What they find is astonishing evidence of a civilization far more advanced than ours. They find an interior stretching...

The first sounds came at midnight in a plaintive scream from an unknown voice in the vastness of space. Within hours, the entire world heard the eerie throbbing. And in billions of earthbound minds the horror grew. Hours later, to the ears of a helpless world, the second message came...Earth's days were numbered! Murray Leinster's horrifying epic of science fiction is still a thrilling read, 50 years after its original publication!

Earth refugees threaten a peaceful space settlement in this influential novel from the Golden Age science fiction author of 2001: A Space Odyssey. More than two thousand years in the future, a small human colony thrives on the ocean paradise of Thalassa-sent there centuries ago to continue the human race before Earth's destruction. Thalassa's resources are vast-and the human colony has lived a bucolic life there. But their existence is threatened...

Scottish novelist David Lindsay was born to a middle-class Calvinist family, forced by poverty to work as an insurance clerk instead of attending university, and at the age of forty took up the cause and worked his way to Corporal of the Royal Army Pay Corps in World War I. After the war he moved to Cornwall with his wife and began writing full-time, publishing his first novel, "A Voyage to Arcturus", in 1920. Although the science fiction novel initially...

There's a heavy price to pay for the manipulation of nature in this novel from the revered author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. It begins as a boon for mankind-the creation of the substance Herakleophorbia IV. When fed to farm animals, it causes them to grow to enormous size. But when it is accidentally allowed to enter the local food chain, the consequences prove monstrous: Human children exposed to it grow into giants, reaching...

The alien threat is real. They fly across our skies, under our oceans, and have disrupted our lives and our safety. At first, man looked upon the aliens with curiosity and a hope that they would be benevolent and improve life on Earth. While this optimistic view was embraced by many, just the opposite was the new reality. After capturing two passenger aircraft out of the sky, their real purpose was revealed. The horrific acts of desecration wrought...

Herland (1915) is a utopian novel by American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland was originally published in The Forerunner, a monthly magazine edited by Gilman, before going out of print for the next several decades. The novel was republished with an influential introduction by scholar Ann J. Lane in 1979 and has since been recognized as an important work of science fiction written by a leading feminist of the early twentieth century. A...