V knigu vkljucheny povest' izvestnogo amerikanskogo pisatelja Dzheka Londona Do Adama, anglijskogo pisatelja-fantasta Gerberta Ujellsa Jeto bylo v kamennom veke, tri povesti francuzskogo pisatelja Roni Starshego Bor'ba z a ogon', Peshhernyj lev, Vamirjeh i Prikljuchenija doistoricheskogo mal'chika D'Jervil'i. Jeti proizvedenija otlichajutsja drug ot druga individual'nym stilem povestvovanija, no ih ob#edinjaet obshhaja tema - zhizn' nashih dalekih predkov v kamennom veke. S illjustracijami.

The first modern tale of alien invasion, H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds remains one of the most influential science fiction novels ever published.
The night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naive locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag - only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their...

A fascinating and prescient account of a future dominated by capitalist greed and mechanical force
A troubled insomniac in 1890s England falls suddenly into a sleep-like trance, from which he does not awake for over two hundred years. During his centuries of slumber, however, investments are made that make him the richest and most powerful man on Earth. But when he comes out of his trance he is horrified to discover that the money accumulated in his name is being used to maintain a hierarchal society in which most are poor, and more than a third of all people are enslaved....

In A Modern Utopia, two travelers fall into a space-warp and suddenly find themselves upon a Utopian Earth controlled by a single World Government.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date...

A cornerstone of early science fiction and a haunting image of world war
Following the development of massive airships, naive Londoner Bert Smallways becomes accidentally involved in a German plot to invade America by air and reduce New York to rubble. But although bombers devastate the city, they cannot overwhelm the country, and their attack leads not to victory but to the beginning of a new and horrific age for humanity. And so dawns the era of Total War, in which brutal aerial bombardments reduce the great cultures of the twentieth century to nothing. As civilization collapses...

The early short stories of an essential 20th century literary personage
Herbert George Wells was perhaps best known as the author of such classic works of science fiction as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. But it was in his short stories, written when he was a young man embarking on a literary career, that he first explored the enormous potential of the scientific discoveries of the day. He described his stories as -a miscellany of inventions, - yet his enthusiasm for science was tempered by an awareness of its horrifying destructive powers and the threat it...

Shipwrecked and alone, Edward Prendick is picked up by a passing vessel and brought to mysterious Noble's Island, the home of the strange and unsettling Doctor Moreau. Banished from his homeland for his radical and cruel experiments, Moreau conducts his tests on the animals of the islandwith horrifying and humanlike results. As Moreau's rule over the island weakens, the disturbing effects of his 'Beast Folk' experiments reveal themselves, triggering a chain reaction of destruction and death."

Introduction by Arthur C. Clarke
Commentary by Jules Verne and an anonymous reviewer from The Critic

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own." Thus begins one of the most terrifying and morally prescient science fiction novels ever penned. Beginning with a series of strange flashes in the distant night sky, the Martian attack initially causes little concern on Earth. Then the destruction erupts--ten massive aliens roam...

Written in 1896, The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of the earliest scientific romances. An instant sensation, it was meant as a commentary on Darwin's theory of evolution, which H. G. Wells stoutly believed. The story centers on the depraved Dr. Moreau, who conducts unspeakable animal experiments on a remote tropical island, with hideous, humanlike results. Edward Prendick, an English-man whose misfortunes bring him to the island, is witness to the Beast Folk's strange civilization and their eventual terrifying regression. While gene-splicing and bioengineering are common practices...

H. G. Wells

Scientific visionary. Social prophet. Master storyteller. Few novelists have captivated generations of readers like H. G. Wells. In enduring, electrifying detail, he takes us to dimensions of time and space that have haunted our dreams for centuries -- and shows us ourselves as we really are.

The time machine

In the heart of Victorian England, an inquisitve gentleman known only as the Time Traveler constructs an elaborate invention that hurtles him hundreds of thousands of years into the future. There he finds himself in the violent center of the ultimate conflict...