Since the 1980s, Ireland has gone through a profound social, demographic, and religious disruption, the impact of which has been seen across recent fiction from Irish writers. Companion to the Contemporary Irish Novel traces this cultural shift and its impact by examining how modern novels have reckoned with a new conception of Irishness.Despite the heady mix of cultural and social destabilization, reform, and economic successes and challenges, this period of relentless di...

An old house turns out not to be as empty as its new owners supposed. A nobleman barters his soul for arcane knowledge. A stranger with a terrible curse looks for an unsuspecting victim to take her place. Monsters, killers and unquiet spirits stalk these stories, drawn from the places where folklore, the Gothic and modern fiction intertwine – Irish literature's dark and ever-present shadow.

What is Sci-Fi?Science fiction is a non-realist genre that foregrounds a sense of material plausibility, insisting that despite seeming outlandish, it is consonant with history and the laws of nature. By turns subtle and bombastic, sci-fi revels in discovery and revelation, whether through human ingenuity or world-altering paradigm shifts. The same impulse informs both the idealism of Star Trek and the existential terror of Frankenstein.Each chapt...

50 Vintage Sci-Fi Short Stories from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. More than 29 hours of vintage science fiction. These science fiction short stories were written by some of the most influential authors of the time including, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, Harlan Ellison, Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, Fritz Leiber, Harry Harrison, Jack McKenty, Robert Silverberg, Alfred Coppel, Rog Phillips, Darius John Granger, Winston Marks, C. H. ...

An astronomer challenges an emperor. A hunter pursues the last dinosaur through a remote rainforest. A young Kerryman emigrates to the Moon to seek his fortune. These fifteen darkly funny stories illuminate a side of Irish literary history that is often overlooked. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the winds of change came rushing in Ireland's direction. Science and technology would transform everything: life, love, death, crime, war, and even history itself. Edited and introduced by Jack Fe...

Mars and Martians is a sweeping 30+ hour journey across the red planet—where explorers land with hope, settlers fight to survive, and something ancient watches from the dust.From the golden age of science fiction comes an extraordinary collection of 60 stories that imagine Mars in every possible form: a frontier, a battlefield, a mystery, a memory. Ray Bradbury’s haunting visions sit alongside Isaac Asimov’s sharp ideas, Philip K. Dick’s unsettling encounters, and ...

A mystical battle between foreign gods and local saints is unleashed as idols are mistaken for garden ornaments; an ambiguous wizard spies on his neighbours from an invisible tower; a cursed duelling pistol influences its owners to commit suicide.With strange combinations of occultism, electricity, magic and playfully Biblical archetypes, the fifteen darkly funny stories in this book illuminate a side of Irish literary history that is often overlooked.Edited and introduced ...

Mars has always been more than a planet.It’s a mirror, a mystery, and a warning — imagined again and again by the greatest minds of classic science fiction.Mars and Martians and Nothing But Mars and Martians gathers nineteen unforgettable short stories from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s — a golden era when writers didn’t just dream about space… they built entire civilizations in the red dust.You’ll meet explorers who...