Celebrate classic novels of the New Wave era of sci-fi with this second collectable science fiction anthology from Library of America. Presenting 4 underrated science fiction classics from a tumultuous time in American history—including works by iconic Black author Samuel R. Delany and feminist Joanna Russ. In R. A. Lafferty’s utterly idiosyncratic and uncategorizable
Past Master (1968), Renaissance philosopher Thomas More is summoned to Golden Astrobe in the year 2535: Can he save the planet’s troubled utopia from its soulless technological perfection and ensure the survival of the faith?
Joanna Russ introduces one of SF’s first and most engaging female adventurers in her taut and edgy debut novel
Picnic on Paradise (1968): the tough, sardonic, unforgettable Alyx, an ancient Phoenician mercenary teleported into the future to serve as guide and bodyguard for a band of stranded space tourists.
The first African American writer to make a name for himself in the genre, Samuel R. Delany was hailed as “the best science-fiction writer in the world” on the basis of
Nova (1968), a white-hot, fast-paced, protocyberpunk interstellar adventure featuring a misfit crew on a high-stakes quest.
Stumbling on a mysterious ancient text among his father’s belongings, the son of a master woodcarver uncovers the key to revolutionary change in Jack Vance’s
Emphyrio (1969), a marvel of craftsmanship and visionary world-building set on remote, feudal, theocratic Halma.
Four mind-bending novels from science fiction's most transformative decade in a deluxe collector's edition hardcover, including two long out-of-print classics
In this second volume of a two-volume set gathering the best American science fiction from the tumultuous 1960s, R. A. Lafferty's quirky and utterly original Past Master, an unjustly neglected classic, imagines Sir Thomas More transported to the colony Astrobe in the year 2535, where he is made president of a future Utopia. In Picnic on Paradise, Joanna Russ presents her indelible heroine, Alyx, who is hired to protect a group of tourists in a hostile alien world. Samuel R. Delany's proto-cyberpunk space opera Nova, reprinted here for the first time in a text corrected by the author, combines the pacing of a revenge story with the arc of a grail-quest legend. Jack Vance's dystopian thriller Emphyrio is the coming-of-age story of Ghyl, who has been raised in a world barring the use of automation but has a strong sense of subversive individualism. The novel has been restored to the author's original text, without later editorial interventions.
