Happy Publication Day 8th June 2017
It’s publication day! We are incredibly excited to announce a classic addition to the Masterworks list from one of the greatest science fiction writers of them all, H. G. Wells, as well as all the stories set in award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin’s fictional European nation of Orsinia, gathered together for the first time ever.
The Shape of Things to Come by H. G. Wells
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME is a prescient look at mankind’s future from the father of modern science fiction.
When Dr Philip Raven, a diplomat working for the League of Nations, dies in the 1930s, he leaves behind a book of dreams outlining the visions he has been experiencing for many years. These visions seem to be glimpses into the future, detailing events that will occur on Earth for the next two hundred years.
This fictional ‘history of the future’ proved prescient in many ways, as Wells predicted events such as the Second World War, the rise of chemical warfare, climate change and the growing instability of the Middle East.
‘Wells is the Prospero of all brave new worlds of the mind, and the Shakespeare of science fiction’ Brian W. Aldiss
‘Wells’s scientific romances were works of art with unique relevance for our times’ Arthur C. Clarke
‘The founding father and presiding genius of UK science fiction’ The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
The Shape of Things to Come is available now in paperback and ebook.
Orisinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
ORSINIA: MALAFRENA, ORSINIAN TALES combines all of the stories set in the fictional European nation of Orsinia.
Among the less-traveled mountains and plains of Central Europe, a little east of Austria perhaps and north of Slovenia, lies the old kingdom of Orsinia. A land of forests and quiet farmlands and towns, with its capital city Krasnoy on the broad Molsen River, Orsinia has always found itself, like all the countries of Europe, subject to forces beyond its borders. Yet, cast as they are in the shadow of tyrannies both Western and Eastern, the lives and dreams of its free people are no less important than the great arguments of Europe’s emperors and dictators.
Here then are those lives: in tales of romance and blood-lust, hope and fear, freedom and tyranny, passion and despair. Tales of love, of life and of death and – amidst the great 19th-century rise of liberalism and nationalism – a tale of revolution against the might of the Hapsburg Empire.
This is Orsinia and these are her stories.
‘ORSINIAN TALES . . . represents the delicate, well-polished woodcarving of a woman who has created whole forests with words . . . lovely and sophisticated’ Philadelphia Enquirer
‘Eleven hauntingly written short stories . . . The view is lively, haunting, infinite’ Publishers Weekly
‘Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller with the humor and the force of a Twain’ Boston Globe