Science Fiction Bargain Book Box

Science Fiction Bargain Book Box

Eighteen books, and not one of them set on the same version of the future.

Inside: the complete StarCraft Dark Templar trilogy, all three volumes together. Neal Stephenson opening a new series in the shadow of the atomic age. Antigone retold in a world where the dead are harvested for genetic material. A terraforming Mars where a climate refugee finds himself in a political marriage. Nuns running a medical station at the edge of explored space. A Vietnamese-inspired empire of pirate fleets and dangerous widows. And Christopher Priest turning an international airport into somewhere reality quietly stops working.

Award shortlists, Clarke Award nominees, a Women's Prize longlisting, and the best American science fiction of an entire year collected in one volume. Hard SF, space opera, queer romance, and speculative fiction that pushes at the edges of the form.

For readers who want to be somewhere else entirely by the end of the first chapter.

1. StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga — Firstborn (Book One) — Christie Golden | ISBN: 9781945683022 | RRP: $22.99
   The opening volume of the Dark Templar Saga, expanding the StarCraft universe with a story of the Protoss, ancient prophecy, and the secrets buried in the ruins of a lost civilisation. Christie Golden is one of the most accomplished tie-in novelists working, and it shows.
2. StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga — Shadow Hunters (Book Two) — Christie Golden | ISBN: 9781945683114 | RRP: $22.99
   The saga continues as the hunt for the truth about the Protoss past intensifies and the Zerg threat grows. Golden deepens the mythology while keeping the action relentless — essential reading for anyone invested in the StarCraft universe.
3. StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga — Twilight (Book Three) — Christie Golden | ISBN: 9781945683176 | RRP: $27.99
   The concluding volume of the trilogy, bringing the prophecy, the war, and the fate of the Protoss to a climactic resolution. With all three books together in this box, the whole saga is here to read straight through.
4. Arch-Conspirator — Veronica Roth | ISBN: 9781803363578 | RRP: $32.99
   A bold retelling of Sophocles' Antigone set in a dying world where the genetic material of the dead is hoarded by the powerful few. Veronica Roth strips the ancient tragedy down to its bones and rebuilds it as urgent, propulsive science fiction.
5. The Principle of Moments — Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson | ISBN: 9781473234208 | RRP: $34.99
   Longlisted for the 2024 TikTok Book Awards, this dazzling debut weaves together time travel, myth, and empire in a story spanning centuries. A remarkable arrival from a major new voice in British science fiction.
6. The Flight of the Aphrodite — S J Morden | ISBN: 9781473228580 | RRP: $32.99
   A deep space vessel. A dwindling crew. A distress signal from somewhere it shouldn't be. SJ Morden delivers a taut, claustrophobic thriller that draws on the best traditions of classic science fiction adventure.
7. The Blue, Beautiful World — Karen Lord | ISBN: 9781399618885 | RRP: $24.99
   Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024, this elegant and humane novel imagines a first contact scenario playing out not through government channels but through culture, music, and the quiet work of extraordinary individuals.
8. The Mars House — Natasha Pulley | ISBN: 9781399618533 | RRP: $55.00
   A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick. On a terraforming Mars, a climate refugee from Earth finds himself entangled in a political marriage and a world where the rules of power, identity, and belonging are nothing like he expected. Natasha Pulley at her most inventive.
9. Airside — Christopher Priest | ISBN: 9781399608831 | RRP: $55.00
   From the visionary author of The Prestige comes a disorienting and brilliant novel set in the liminal space of international airports — where identities blur, reality shifts, and nothing about the journey is quite what it seems.
10. The Red Scholar's Wake — Aliette de Bodard | ISBN: 9781399601368 | RRP: $24.99
    Shortlisted for the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award, this rich and inventive space opera is set among the Vietnamese-inspired Đại Việt empire, following a widow who must forge an unlikely alliance to survive in a world of pirate fleets and dangerous politics.
11. Sisters of the Forsaken Stars — Lina Rather | ISBN: 9781250782144 | RRP: $32.99
    A congregation of nuns operates a small medical station at the edge of explored space — and finds themselves at the centre of a rebellion they can no longer ignore. Thoughtful, compassionate, and quietly gripping space opera.
12. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 — John Joseph Adams (ed.) | ISBN: 9780358690122 | RRP: $32.99
    An outstanding anthology gathering the year's finest short speculative fiction from across the genre. The perfect way to discover new writers and sample the extraordinary range of what science fiction and fantasy are currently capable of.
13. Winter's Orbit — Everina Maxwell | ISBN: 9780356515885 | RRP: $22.99
    A Sunday Times instant bestseller and fan favourite, this queer space opera romance follows two men thrust into a political marriage who must navigate court intrigue, interplanetary diplomacy, and their own undeniable feelings for each other.
14. Star Bringer — Tracy Wolff | ISBN: 9780349439976 | RRP: $24.99
    One ship. Seven strangers. The universe on the brink of destruction. Tracy Wolff delivers a propulsive, witty space adventure with a cast of misfits who have absolutely no business saving the galaxy — but are going to try anyway.
15. Fortuna — Kristyn Merbeth | ISBN: 9780316453998 | RRP: $27.99
    The Kaisers are a family of interplanetary smugglers scraping a living on the fringes of five colony worlds. When a job goes catastrophically wrong, they find themselves caught between forces that could tear the solar system apart — and each other.
16. The Andromeda Evolution — Michael Crichton | ISBN: 9780062473271 | RRP: $39.99
    A worthy continuation of Crichton's classic thriller. When a new form of the Andromeda strain is discovered deep in the Amazon, a team of scientists races to contain a threat that has been evolving for decades — with devastating potential.
17. The Stardust Grail — Yume Kitasei | ISBN: 9780008708832 | RRP: $34.99
    A retired alien-artefact smuggler is pulled back into the game for one last job: recover a stolen relic before it destroys an entire civilisation. A stylish, fast-paced space heist with genuine heart at its centre.
18. Polostan (Bomb Light, Book 1) — Neal Stephenson | ISBN: 9780008262600 | RRP: $34.99
    The first book in Neal Stephenson's Bomb Light series, set across 1930s America and the Soviet Union. A young woman navigates a world of competing ideologies, dangerous secrets, and the looming shadow of the atomic age in this ambitious and richly detailed opening chapter.