Crossing Dimensions A Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Stories

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In the anime and manga series of Dragon Ball Z , in the Androids Saga, Future Trunks returns to the past to give Goku medicine to prevent him from dying of a heart disease and warns him of the Androids, in the process creating parallel realities, leading to the appearance of Cell, who killed the same Future Trunks from a different splitting timeline to come back to the main timeline when the Androids are still alive for him to absorb.

Its sequel, Dragon Ball Super , later features separate universes that are in pairs whose numbers add up to the total number of the universe: Previously there were 18 universes, but Zen'o the supreme ruler of the Dragon Ball Multiverse destroyed 6 of them in a rage. Previously, Daizenshuu 7 stated that the typical Dragon Ball Universe had only 4 galaxies, but Dragon Ball Super effectively retcons this, where Whis says that the universe contains endless galaxies.

The anime Turn A Gundam attempted to combine all the parallel Gundam universes other incarnations of the series, with similar themes but differing stories and characters, that had played out at different times since the debut of the concept in the s of the metaseries into one single reality. The anime and manga series Eureka Seven: AO takes place in a parallel universe that is different from the one in the series' predecessor Eureka Seven.

The E7 series started off in the year , and the AO world, which takes place in the year , would be the home of the two main characters' son. The anime and manga series Katekyo Hitman Reborn! The anime Neon Genesis Evangelion features a parallel world in one of the final episodes.

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This parallel world is a sharp contrast to the harsh, dark "reality" of the show and presents a world where all the characters enjoy a much happier life. This parallel world would become the basis for the new Evangelion manga series Angelic Days. The anime series Bakugan features a parallel universe called Vestroia and is the homeworld of fantastic creatures called Bakugan. The series' hero Dan Kuso alongside his friends and teammates must save Earth and Vestroia from total destruction. They go to another dimension or universe through a pathway.

The other universe has also other life forms and other types of technology. In another anime series, Digimon , there is parallel universe called "digital world". The show's child protagonists meet digital monsters, or digimon, from this world and becomes partners and friends.

In the third story arc of Digimon Fusion , the Clockmaker who is later revealed to be Bagramon and his partner Clockmon travel through space-time to recruit heroes from previous series so they can help the Fusion Fighters to defeat Quartzmon before DigiQuartz can absorb each human and digital world in the multiverse. In the anime series Umineko no Naku Koro ni the rounds of the battle between Battler and Beatrice take place in different dimensions, in order to show all kinds of possibilities much to Battler's dismay also the character Bernkastel is known for her ability to travel into different worlds by the usage of "fragments".

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode " Parallels ", Lt. Worf traveled to several parallel universes when his shuttlecraft went through a time space fissure. The Community episode Remedial Chaos Theory , six different timelines and one "prime" timeline are explored, each having a different outcome based on which member of the study group goes to get the pizza. One timeline, dubbed the "Darkest Timeline", results in the greatest amount of terrible incidents and ends with Abed donning a felt goatee bearing resemblance to Spock's in "Mirror, Mirror".

In the anime series of Fullmetal Alchemist , there exists a gateway that can be conjured by alchemists that acts as a source of all knowledge and energy; towards the end of the series, it is revealed that this gateway connects the world of the anime with the real world, set during the first decades of the 20th century.

Planet of the Gods by Robert Moore Williams

It is revealed that the two worlds shared a common history until their histories diverged , apparently due to the success of alchemy in one world and that of modern physics in the other. Sometimes a television series will use parallel universes as an ongoing subplot. Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Discovery elaborated on the premise of the original series' "Mirror" universe and developed multi-episode story arcs based on the premise.

The New Adventures of Superman. Following the precedent set by Star Trek , these story arcs show alternative universes that have turned out "worse" than the "original" universe: Clark eventually becomes Superman, with help from the "original" Lois Lane, but he is immediately revealed as Clark Kent and so has no life of his own. In addition to following Star Trek's lead, showing the "evil" variants of the main storyline gives the writers an opportunity to show what is at stake by portraying the worst that could happen and the consequences if the protagonists fail or the importance of a character's presence.

Once Upon a Time often talks about alternative realms or universes in which all different forms of magic, and non-magic may occur, depending on the realm. According to the Mad Hatter Sebastian Stan , they "touch each other in a long line of lands, each just as real as the last. In the season 1 finale of The Flash , the Reverse-Flash opens a singularity that connects his world to a parallel universe called Earth In the second season, The Flash starts facing villains from that earth who also have doppelgangers on Prime Earth sent by Zoom.

Light ; all are sent by Zoom to kill The Flash with the assurance of being taken back home. However, they are not the only ones who arrive from the singularity; this also includes the Earth-2 Flash after a close death and loss of speed from a confrontation with Zoom. When The Flash starts having a hard time facing off against Sand Demon, he frees Jay so that he could help him as well as train him in his speed. With a new trick taught by Jay, Barry defeats Sand Demon. When Jay confronts and sees Wells again, the argument gets heated between them before Barry intercedes. The "Alf Stewart Rape Dungeon" series, created by artist Mr Doodleburger, uses footage from the Australian TV drama show Home and Away , but through the use of clever overlaid audio tracks, casts one of the main characters of the show, long running character Alf Stewart as a vicious violent character in a parallel version of Home and Away.

Parallel universes in modern comics have become particularly rich and complex, in large part due to the continual problem of continuity faced by the major two publishers, Marvel Comics and DC Comics. The two publishers have used the multiverse concept to fix problems arising from integrating characters from other publishers into their own canon, and from having major serial protagonists having continuous histories lasting, as in the case of Superman , over 70 years. Additionally, both publishers have used new alternative universes to re-imagine their own characters.

DC Comics inaugurated its multiverse in the early s, with the reintroduction of Golden Age superheroes the Justice Society of America now located on Earth-Two , and devised a "mirror universe" scenario of inverted morality and supervillain domination of Earth-Three shortly afterward, several years before Star Trek devised its own darker alternative universe. There was a lull before DC inaugurated additional alternative universes in the seventies, such as Earth-X, where there was an Axis victory in World War II , Earth-S, home to the Fawcett Comics superheroes of the forties and fifties, such as Captain Marvel , and Earth-Prime, where superheroes only existed in fictional forms.

Therefore, comic books in general are one of the few entertainment mediums where the concept of parallel universes are a major and ongoing theme. DC in particular periodically revisits the idea in major crossover storylines, such as Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis , where Marvel has a series called What If DC's version of "What If DC Comics series 52 heralded the return of the Multiverse.

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The aim was to yet again address many of the problems and confusions brought on by the Multiverse in the DCU. Countdown and Countdown Presents: Marvel has also had many large crossover events which depicted an alternative universe, many springing from events in the X-Men books, such as 's Days of Future Past , 's Age of Apocalypse , and 's House Of M.

In addition the Squadron Supreme is a DC inspired Marvel Universe that has been used several times, often crossing over into the mainstream Universe in the Avengers comic. Exiles is an offshoot of the X-Men franchise that allows characters to hop from one alternative reality to another, leaving the original, main Marvel Universe intact. The Marvel UK line has long had multiverse stories including the Jaspers' Warp storyline of Captain Britain 's first series it was here that the designation Earth was first applied to the mainstream Marvel Universe. Marvel Comics, as of , launched their most popular parallel universe, the Ultimate Universe.

The graphic novel Watchmen is set in an alternative history, in a where superheroes exist, the Vietnam War was won by the United States, and Richard Nixon is in his fifth term as President of the United States. The Soviet Union and the United States are still locked in an escalating "Cold War" as in our own world, but as the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan in this world and threatens Pakistan, nuclear war may be imminent.

In , Tammy published The Clock and Cluny Jones , where a mysterious grandfather clock hurls bully Cluny Jones into a harsh alternative reality where she becomes the bullied. This story was reprinted in Misty annual as Grandfather's Clock. In , Misty published The Sentinels. The Sentinels were two crumbling apartment blocks that connected the mainstream world with an alternative reality where Hitler conquered Britain in In , Jinty published Worlds Apart.

Six girls experience alternative worlds ruled by greed, sports-mania, vanity, crime, intellectualism, and fear. These are in fact their dream worlds becoming real after they are knocked out by a mysterious gas from a chemical tanker that crashed into their school. In Jinty also published Land of No Tears where a lame girl travels to a future world where people with things wrong with them are cruelly treated, and emotions are banned. The parallel universe concept has also appeared prominently in the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series from Archie Comics.

The first and most oft-recurring case of this is another "mirror universe" where Sonic and his various allies are evil or anti-heroic while the counterpart of the evil Dr. Another recurring universe featured in the series is a perpendicular dimension that runs through all others, known as the No Zone. The inhabitants of this universe monitor travel between the others, often stepping in with their Zone Cop police force to punish those who travel without authorization between worlds.

In more recent years, the comic has adapted the alternative dimension from the video games Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure , home to Sonic's ally Blaze the Cat. The continuities seen in various other Sonic franchises also exist in the comic, most notably those based on the cartoon series Sonic Underground and Sonic X. For some years, a number of other universes were also featured that parodied various popular franchises, such as Sailor Moon , Godzilla , and various titles from Marvel Comics.

Archie has also used this concept as the basis for crossovers between Sonic and other titles that they publish, including Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Mega Man. The various Transformers comics also feature the parallel universe concept, and feature the various continuities from different branches of the franchise as parallel worlds that occasionally make contact with each other. Quite notably, the annual Botcon fan convention introduced a comic storyline that featured Cliffjumper , an Autobot from the original Transformers series, entering an alternative universe where his fellow Autobots are evil and the Decepticons are good.

This universe is known as the "Shattered Glass" universe, and continued on in comics and text based stories after its initial release. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time after the main protagonist, Link, defeats the dark lord, Ganon, he travels back in time to his childhood. This results in two alternative histories for Hyrule. In the other Link is no longer present allowing Ganon to return to go on a rampage that forced the gods of Hyrule to flood the world in The Legend of Zelda: There is also a scenario in which Link is killed by Ganon in the final battle, resulting in an alternative history in which Hyrule is put in an era of decline, leading to the events of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

In the psychological horror point-and-click adventure game Dark Seed , the main character Mike Dawson discovers a parallel universe by going through his living room mirror. The series also introduces the concepts of different "Realms" corresponding to Light, Darkness, Twilight, and Nothingness. In the role-playing game Outcast , a probe is sent to a parallel universe and is attacked by an "entity".

Cutter Slade must escort a team of scientists across to the other world in order to retrieve and repair the damaged probe before the earth is consumed by a black hole. The Half-Life series revolves heavily around alternate universes. Xen is a location in the first Half-Life game, accidentally discovered by scientists and described as a border world between dimensions, where the player must travel to stop an alien invasion.

Half-Life 2 features a multidimensional empire called The Combine which has successfully conquered Earth and subdued humanity, among countless other universes and species. In the survival horror video game series Silent Hill , the town of Silent Hill fluctuates between the real world, where Silent Hill is seemingly just an ordinary tourist town, the Fog World, which is like the real world, except the town is shrouded in thick fog and is nearly uninhabited except for monsters and a few people, and a dark and dilapidated version of the town called the "Other World".

In the adventure PC game Myst , the unnamed protagonist travels to multiple alternative worlds through the use of special books, which describe a world within and transport the user to that world when a window on the front page is touched.

In the adventure PC game 9: The Last Resort , after resolving several mind-blowing and unique puzzles, the player gets past "The Tiki Guards"; and a door opens up to "The Void" - actually a room to another universe, which houses the entirety of space. Both titles of the When They Cry visual novel series Higurashi and Umineko for short contain the concept of parallel worlds. These series both involve some kind of murder mystery. As soon as the main character has 'lost', another parallel world, called a Fragment, is chosen to be observed.

This continues until the entire mystery is solved. EarthBound features many areas of the game that can be considered alternative dimensions. The first is an illusion created by the Mani Mani Statue that transforms the metropolis of Fourside into a bizarre neon metropolis called Moonside, filled with unusual characters and enemies. The second is Magicant, the world of Ness's subconscious that is accessed after obtaining the Eight Melodies.

Finally, toward the end of the game, the protagonists arrive at the Cave to the Past, where they travel back in time to the haunting past dimension of the cave to face Giygas. After the completion of the Special World in Super Mario World , the overworld transforms from a green-colored springtime to an orange-colored autumnal setting. Many enemies encountered in the game are transformed into bizarre counterparts.

Parallel universes in fiction

Super Mario 64 features a world called "Tiny Huge Island" which has two variants: The player can only access certain parts of the level to obtain certain stars depending on which variant they are into. The two variants can be switched between via portals in the world. Banjo-Kazooie features a world called "Click Clock Wood", which has spring, summer, autumn and winter variants. The environment develops between the seasons making some areas accessible or inaccessible, and actions taken in one season affect the outcome in others.

The Legend of Zelda: In those games, the player must switch between the parallel past and present worlds Ages and between spring, summer, autumn and winter Seasons to progress through the game. In the first half of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess , areas of Hyrule are veiled by the Twilight Realm. These areas are dusky and brooding in appearance, Link cannot transform out of wolf form, characters only appear as spirits that cannot be communicated with, and enemies are twilight variations of their regular forms. Otherwise, the Twilight Realm is identical to regular Hyrule.

Fall of Man is set in alternative universe where Tsarist Russia never experienced the Russian Revolution but instead became the bridgehead for an aggressive alien invasion from a species known as the "Chimera", who then proceed to overrun Western Europe , Great Britain , Canada and much of the United States , and where there has been no Second World War as a result. The events of the game and its sequels begin in its alternative Each Zone in Sonic CD has four variations: Past, Present, Bad Future and Good Future, each displaying some subtle and not-so subtle alterations. The series has also seen alternative dimensions in the case of the Sonic Rush series, in which Sonic encounters a hero from another world named Blaze the Cat whose nemesis is an alternative counterpart of his own foe, Dr.

The Sonic series also makes use of the concept of alternative timelines. The story of Chrono Cross centers around travel between two alternative timelines, the original or "Another World" and "Home World" which is a branch created by the actions of the heroes of the game's predecessor, Chrono Trigger. In Super Paper Mario , the town "Flipside" which acts as the game's central hub has an alternative mirrored version called "Flopside". While Flipside appears pristine and the residents there are typically cheerful, Flopside appears somewhat dilapidated and is populated by surly characters.

1000 novels everyone must read: Science Fiction & Fantasy (part one)

The series Legacy of Kain is played through several realms and timelines. Sudeki is set in a realm of light and a parallel realm of darkness. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion features an alternative hellish world called "Oblivion", as well as a painting you can climb into and a quest where you enter a dream world. Majora's Mask takes place in Termina, a parallel world to Hyrule. Almost all of the characters from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time reappear in the game.

The Darkness pivots around a world of darkness you travel to when you die, which is occupied by World War 1 soldiers. Echoes involves a world, "Aether", having an alternative self in the, "Dark" realm, universe, or dimension. The protagonist, Samus, finds out that she just dropped into a hopeless war for the Luminoth, the dominant species of Light Aether against the Ing, the dominant species of Dark Aether.

Crash Twinsanity features Crash, Cortex, and Nina traveling to the "10th dimension," which could also be a parallel universe suggested by the theme and how everything seems to be opposite. Minecraft features an alternative dimension called "The Nether", that includes a 'hell' like theme. It also contains a second alternative dimension called "The End", home world of the Endermen, a type of monster that spawns rarely in the main world. Eternal Punishment takes place in an alternative universe called "This Side" where in the events of Innocent Sin did not take place and the characters have never met in the past.

The Fallout series takes place in a subtly different universe. For example, the ship that landed the first men on the moon in is called Valiant 11 , rather than Apollo It is an alternative future in a constant state of flux, as heroes and villains battle for the future of Earth.

Virtue's Last Reward heavily uses the concept of multiple realities as the basis for its plot as well as its central gameplay mechanic of traversing through realities and altering history. The first person shooter BioShock Infinite features the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The crossover video game Heroes of the Storm features the iconic characters of Blizzard Entertainment. In the game, heroes and villains from Warcraft , Diablo , and StarCraft have been sucked into a trans-dimensional storm called "Nexus".

Stranded in a strange limbo of clashing universes, these combatants are joined by the same fate to battle for dominance. In a dangerous world, they seek the solace and strength that comes from family and belonging. These are stories to be savored slowly and pondered deeply because they cut to the very heart of who we are. Young Woman in a Garden: Stories by Delia Sherman. Here are the lives that make up larger histories, here are tricksters and gardeners, faeries and musicians, all glittering and sparkling, finding beauty and hope and always unexpected, a touch of wild magic.

Teeming with space pirates, battle robots, interstellar travel and genetically engineered creatures, every story and image is a quality, crafted work of science fiction in its own right, as thrilling and fascinating as it is worthy and important. These are stories about people with disabilities in all of their complexity and diversity, that scream with passion and intensity.

These are stories that refuse to go gently. It is comprised of original previously unpublished works only, from stellar established and upcoming African writers: Fairy Tales Retold edited by Paula Guran. But in truth, they have continued to prick the imaginations of readers at all ages. Over the years, authors have often borrowed bits and pieces from these stories, grafting them into their own writing, creating literature with both new meaning and age-old significance. This new anthology compiles some of the best modern fairy-tale retellings and reinventions from award-winning and bestselling authors, acclaimed storytellers, and exciting new talents, into an enchanting collection.

Explore magical new realms by traveling with us, Beyond the Woods. Diverse Energies edited by Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti. Imagine a world filled with fierce, fiery beings, hiding in our shadows, in our dreams, under our skins. Eavesdropping and exploring; savaging our bodies, saving our souls. They are monsters, saviours, victims, childhood friends.

Some have called them genies: And they are everywhere. On street corners, behind the wheel of a taxi, in the chorus, between the pages of books. Every language has a word for them. Every culture knows their traditions. Every religion, every history has them hiding in their dark places.

There is no part of the world that does not know them. They are the Djinn. They are among us. Tales by Michael Chabon, Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, Carol Emshwiller, George Saunders, and others pull the reader into a vivid dreamspace and embrace the knowledge that life today is increasingly surreal. Together, they have won virtually every major prize — from the National Book Award to the World Fantasy Award to the Newbery Medal — and have made best-seller lists worldwide.

Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft. We signed up eight of the most acclaimed authors in the field and arranged for them to travel to Microsoft Research labs around the globe. The eight stories were joined by a short graphic novel from two up-and-coming comics creators in a beautiful eBook edition with striking computer-generated illustrations. Happily Ever After edited by John Klima. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer present an immense, authoritative anthology that maps the development and modern-day resurgence of this form, argues for its special virtues and present preeminence-and entertains us with some spectacular storytelling along the way.

The Humanity of Monsters edited by Michael Matheson. Only the surety that though there be monsters, you will name them false.


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And when you meet those who truly are, you will not know them. How might the effects of that one intervention reach across a century of repercussions, and shape the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens, or influence its economy, culture, or politics? Might Iraq have finally escaped the cycle of invasion and violence triggered by and, if so, what would a new, free Iraq look like? These twenty original stories tell of scary futures, magical adventures, and the joys and heartbreaks of teenage life.

Tales from the New Frontier edited by Jonathan Strahan. For generations, people have wondered what it would be like to travel to and live there. Now the award-winning anthologist Jonathan Strahan has brought together thirteen original stories to explore the possibilities. After reading Life on Mars , readers will never look at the fourth planet from the sun the same way again. Loosed upon the World: Is it the end of the world as we know it? Climate Fiction, or Cli-Fi, is exploring the world we live in now—and in the very near future—as the effects of global warming become more evident.

Magic in the Mirrorstone: Tales of Fantasy edited by Steve Berman. Comic and dark, epic and entertaining, these stories will introduce readers to the new voices of Mirrorstone beside the treasured favorites of Young Adult fantasy. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon. New Voices of Fantasy edited by Peter S. Or if a haunted spacesuit banged on your door? When is the ideal time to turn into a tiger? Would you post a supernatural portal on Craigslist? In these nineteen stories, the enfants terribles of fantasy have entered the building—a love-starved, ambulatory skyscraper.

The New Voices of Fantasy tethers some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. So go ahead, join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back. New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean edited by Karen Lord. It is the third publication of Peekash Press, an imprint of Akashic Books and Peepal Tree Press committed to supporting the emergence of new Caribbean writing, and as part of CaribLit project.

In cities past, present, and future, in metropoli real and imagined, meet mutilated warrior-women, dead boys, mechanical dogs, escape artists and more. From the dizzying heights of rooftops and spires to the sinister secrets of underpasses and gutters, some of the most talented authors writing today will take you on a trip through the urban fantastic.

Rogues edited by George R. Martin and Gardner R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals.

Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire. But these are not bedtime stories designed to usher an innocent child gently into a realm of dreams. These are stories that bite — lush and erotic, often dark and disturbing mystical journeys through a phantasmagoric landscape of distinctly adult sensibilities.

Once upon a time. John Carter, a Confederate veteran turned gold prospector, is hiding from Indians in an Arizona cave when he is mysteriously transported to Mars, known to the locals as Barsoom. There, surrounded by four-armed, green-skinned warriors, ferocious white apes, eight-legged horse-substitutes, legged "dogs", and so on, he falls in love with Princess Dejah Thoris, who might almost be human if she didn't lay eggs. She is, naturally, both beautiful and extremely scantily clad Burroughs's first novel, published in serial form, is the purest pulp, and its lack of pretension is its greatest charm.

Disjointed, hallucinatory cut-ups form a collage of, as Burroughs explained of the title, "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork". A junkie's picaresque adventures in both the real world and the fantastical "Interzone", this is satire using the most savage of distorting mirrors: Only Cronenberg could have filmed it in , and even he recreated Burroughs's biography rather than his interior world. Butler's fourth novel throws African American Dana Franklin back in time to the early s, where she is pitched into the reality of slavery and the individual struggle to survive its horrors.

Butler single-handedly brought to the SF genre the concerns of gender politics, racial conflict and slavery. Several of her novels are groundbreaking, but none is more compelling or shocking than Kindred. A brilliant work on many levels, it ingeniously uses the device of time travel to explore the iniquity of slavery through Dana's modern sensibilities. The wittiest of Victorian dystopias by the period's arch anti-Victorian. The hero Higgs finds himself in New Zealand as, for a while, did the chronic misfit Butler. Assisted by a native, Chowbok, he makes a perilous journey across a mountain range to Erewhon say it backwards , an upside-down world in which crime is "cured" and illness "punished", where universities are institutions of "Unreason" and technology is banned.

The state religion is worship of the goddess Ydgrun ie "Mrs Grundy" - bourgeois morality. Does it sound familiar? Higgs escapes by balloon, with the sweetheart he has found there. He ends up keeping his promise, witnessing the French revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath from the perspective of the Italian treetops. Drafted soon after Calvino's break with communism over the invasion of Hungary, the novel can be read as a fable about intellectual commitments.

At the same time, it's a perfectly turned fantasy, densely imagined but lightly written in a style modelled on Voltaire and Robert Louis Stevenson. Chris Tayler Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Campbell has long been one of the masters of psychological horror, proving again and again that what's in our heads is far scarier than any monster lurking in the shadows. In this novel, the domineering old spinster Queenie dies - a relief to those around her. Her niece Alison inherits the house, but soon starts to suspect that the old woman is taking over her eight-year-old daughter Rowan.

A paranoid, disturbing masterpiece. The intellectuals' favourite children's story began as an improvised tale told by an Oxford mathematics don to a colleague's daughters; later readers have found absurdism, political satire and linguistic philosophy in a work that, years on, remains fertile and fresh, crisp yet mysterious, and endlessly open to intepretation.

Alice, while reading in a meadow, sees a white rabbit rush by, feverishly consulting a watch. She follows him down a hole Freudian analysis, as elsewhere in the story, is all too easy , where she grows and shrinks in size and encounters creatures mythological, extinct and invented.

Morbid jokes and gleeful subversion abound. The trippier sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and, like its predecessor, illustrated by John Tenniel. More donnish in tone, this fantasy follows Alice into a mirror world in which everything is reversed. Her journey is based on chess moves, during the course of which she meets such figures as Humpty Dumpty and the riddling twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee. More challenging intellectually than the first instalment, it explores loneliness, language and the logic of dreams.

The year is - and other times. Fevvers, aerialiste, circus performer and a virgin, claims she was not born, but hatched out of an egg. She has two large and wonderful wings. In fact, she is large and wonderful in every way, from her false eyelashes to her ebullient and astonishing adventures. The journalist Jack Walser comes to interview her and stays to love and wonder, as will every reader of this entirely original extravaganza, which deftly and wittily questions every assumption we make about the lives of men and women on this planet. Carmen Callil Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

The golden age of the American comic book coincided with the outbreak of the second world war and was spearheaded by first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants who installed square-jawed supermen as bulwarks against the forces of evil. Chabon's Pulitzer prize-winning picaresque charts the rise of two young cartoonists, Klayman and Kavalier. It celebrates the transformative power of pop culture, and reveals the harsh truths behind the hyperreal fantasies.

XB Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. Clarke's third novel fuses science and mysticism in an optimistic treatise describing the transcendence of humankind from petty, warring beings to the guardians of utopia, and beyond. One of the first major works to present alien arrival as beneficent, it describes the slow process of social transformation when the Overlords come to Earth and guide us to the light. Humanity ultimately transcends the physical and joins a cosmic overmind, so ushering in the childhood's end of the title EB Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

Chesterton's "nightmare", as he subtitled it, combines Edwardian delicacy with wonderfully melodramatic tub-thumping - beautiful sunsets and Armageddon - to create an Earth as strange as any far-distant planet. Secret policemen infiltrate an anarchist cabal bent on destruction, whose members are known only by the days of the week; but behind each one's disguise, they discover only another policeman.

At the centre of all is the terrifying Sunday, a superhuman force of mischief and pandemonium. Chesterton's distorting mirror combines spinetingling terror with round farce to give a fascinating perspective on Edwardian fears of and flirtations with anarchism, nihilism and a world without god. Clarke's first novel is a vast, hugely satisfying alternative history, a decade in the writing, about the revival of magic - which had fallen into dusty, theoretical scholarship - in the early 19th century. Two rival magicians flex their new powers, pursuing military glory and power at court, striking a dangerous alliance with the Faerie King, and falling into passionate enmity over the use and meaning of the supernatural.

The book is studded with footnotes both scholarly and comical, layered with literary pastiche, and invents a whole new strain of folklore: This classic by an unjustly neglected writer tells the story of Drove and Pallahaxi-Browneyes on a far-flung alien world which undergoes long periods of summer and gruelling winters lasting some 40 years. It's both a love story and a war story, and a deeply felt essay, ahead of its time, about how all living things are mutually dependant.

This is just the kind of jargon-free, humane, character-driven novel to convert sceptical readers to science fiction. Coupland began Girlfriend in a Coma in "probably the darkest period of my life", and it shows. Listening to the Smiths - whose single gave the book its title - can't have helped. This is a story about the end of the world, and the general falling-off that precedes it, as year-old Karen loses first her virginity, then consciousness. When she reawakens more than a decade later, the young people she knew and loved have died, become junkies or or simply lost that new-teenager smell.

Wondering what the future holds? It's wrinkles, disillusionment and the big sleep. It's not often you get to read a book vertically as well as horizontally, but there is much that is uncommon about House of Leaves. It's ostensibly a horror story, but the multiple narrations and typographical tricks - including one chapter that cuts down through the middle of the book - make it as much a comment on metatextuality as a novel. That said, the creepiness stays with you, especially the house that keeps stealthily remodelling itself: Carrie O'Grady Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop.

It wasn't a problem at first: But the changes don't stop there: A curly tail, trotters and a snout are not far off. Darrieussecq's modern philosophical tale is witty, telling and hearteningly feminist. Joanna Biggs Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop. The setting is a post-apocalyptic future, long past the age of humans. Aliens have taken on the forms of human archetypes, in an attempt to come to some understanding of human civilisation and play out the myths of the planet's far past.

The novel follows Lobey, who as Orpheus embarks on a quest to bring his lover back from the dead. With lush, poetic imagery and the innovative use of mythic archetypes, Delaney brilliantly delineates the human condition. Dick's novel became the basis for the film Blade Runner, which prompted a resurgence of interest in the man and his works, but similarities film and novel are slight.

Here California is under-populated and most animals are extinct; citizens keep electric pets instead. In order to afford a real sheep and so affirm his empathy as a human being, Deckard hunts rogue androids, who lack empathy. As ever with Dick, pathos abounds and with it the inquiry into what is human and what is fake. Much imitated "alternative universe" novel by the wayward genius of the genre.