Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
In this diverse and vigorous mix of stories by newcomers and luminaries, writers offer their takes on what life might hold for us in the next few years. The resulting visions of war, oppression, and daily struggle are sometimes humorous, sometimes terrifying (and occasionally both), but always thought-provoking.
We is a dystopian novel written by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. Originally drafted in Russian, the book could be published only abroad. It was translated into English in 1924. Even as the book won a wide readership overseas, the author's satiric depiction led to his banishment under Joseph Stalin's regime in the then USSR. The book's depiction of life under a totalitarian state influenced the other novels of the 20th century. Like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four, We describes a future socialist society that has turned out to be not perfect but inhuman. Orwell claimed that Brave New World must be partly derived from We, but Huxley denied this. The novel is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State which assists mass surveillance. Here life is scientifically managed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by reason as the primary justification for the construct of the society. By way of formulae and equations outlined by the One State, the individual's behaviour is based on logic.
ÒI like a little rebellion now and thenÓÑso wrote Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, enlisting in a tradition that throughout American history has led writers to rage and reason, prophesy and provoke. This is the first anthology to collect and examine an American literature that holds the nation to its highest ideals, castigating it when it falls short and pointing the way to a better collective future. American Protest Literature presents sources from eleven protest movementsÑpolitical, social, and culturalÑfrom the Revolution to abolition to gay rights to antiwar protest. Each section reprints documents from the original phase of the movement as well as evidence of its legacy in later times. Informative headnotes place the selections in historical context and draw connections with other writings within the anthology and beyond. Sources include a wide variety of genresÑpamphlets, letters, speeches, sermons, legal documents, poems, short stories, photographs, postersÑand a range of voices from prophetic to outraged to sorrowful, from U.S. Presidents to the disenfranchised. Together they provide an enlightening and inspiring survey of this most American form of literature.
**NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JODIE COMER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, AND WRITTEN BY ALICE BIRCH (NORMAL PEOPLE)** “The End We Start From by Megan Hunter is a short, concentrated book—a shot of distilled story, like the pulp of a tale boiled to a thick spiced paste. . . . With passages from mythology interspersed with its imagined future, the book is engrossing, compelling and finally hopeful.” —Naomi Alderman, author of The Power “The End We Start From is a beautifully spare, haunting meditation on the persistence of life after catastrophe. I loved it.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven Longlisted for the 2018 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist for the Barnes & Noble 2017 Discover Great New Writers Award An indelible and elemental debut—a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a tale of endurance in the face of unimaginable change. In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family is forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds. This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world—of new life and new hope—sings with love.
This is a dystopian social science fiction novel and morality tale. The novel is set in the year 1984, a fictional future in which most of the world has been destroyed by unending war, constant government monitoring, historical revisionism, and propaganda. The totalitarian superstate Oceania, ruled by the Party and known as Airstrip One, now includes Great Britain as a province. The Party uses the Thought Police to repress individuality and critical thought. Big Brother, the tyrannical ruler of Oceania, enjoys a strong personality cult that was created by the party's overzealous brainwashing methods. Winston Smith, the main character, is a hard-working and skilled member of the Ministry of Truth's Outer Party who secretly despises the Party and harbors rebellious fantasies.
In a "feudal Europe seven centuries into post-Hitlerian society, Burdekin's novel explores the connection between gender and political power and anticipates modern feminist science fiction."--Cover.