Science FictionSix NYRB Classics
Our Science Fiction box boasts a mix of short story collections and novels that imagine far-off futures to pose enduring questions about our present. The collection includes two full-length works by the speculative fiction pioneer John Wyndham, whom David Mitchell calls “a true English visionary, a William Blake with a science doctorate.” In Chocky, with an afterword by Margaret Atwood, a young boy’s parents become increasingly skeptical of his alarmingly inquisitive imaginary friend. Set in a postapocalyptic dystopia, The Chrysalids follows a teen living in a fundamentalist society with zero tolerance for difference—and who discovers he has strange and dangerous superpowers he can only hide for so long. Another dystopian fantasy, Tatyana Tolstaya’s The Slynx is a satire of corruption and bureaucracy by an undersung Russian writer who’s garnered comparisons to Chekhov.