Theodore Sturgeon
More Than Human (1953): This International Fantasy Award winner built from three linked novellas explores loneliness, belonging and immortality through a group of psionically gifted social outcasts.
Some of Your Blood (1961): A psychological horror novel with vampiric underpinnings told in epistolary form through case files, letters, and psychiatric notes.
The Dreaming Jewels (1950): His first novel, also published as The Synthetic Man, is a cosmic “found family” tale about a boy who joins a traveling circus – with some surprising secrets. A fan favorite.
E Pluribus Unicorn (1953): A collection of short stories that cover sci-fi, horror, and dark fantasy.
Alfred Bester
The Stars My Destination (1956): Also known as Tiger! Tiger!, it is considered one of the greatest SF novels ever written and laid the groundwork for the Cyberpunk movement. A far-future retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo.
The Demolished Man (1953): The first ever Hugo Award winner for Best Novel establishes a future in which ESP makes crime almost impossible. But a determined mogul is prepared to commit the perfect murder.
The Dark Side of the Earth (1964): This early collection of short fiction contains seven stories including “The Pi Man” about a man whose brain is a tuning fork for the random patterns of the universe.
Virtual Unrealities (1997): This more comprehensive collection of Bester’s short fiction includes his stories from Dark Side as well as other memorable tales. Standouts include “Fondly Fahrenheit” about a manic-depressive robot and “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed”, a mind-bending time travel parody.
Bob Shaw
Other Days, Other Eyes (1972): An expansion of his Hugo-nominated story “Light of Other Days”, the conceit at the heart of this novel is slow glass, a manufactured variation of glass that slows the passage of light, allowing a literal window into the past.
The Ragged Astronauts (1986): Winner of the BSFA Award for Best Novel, this is the first book of Shaw’s Land and Overland trilogy. A pre-industrial world under threat from airborne parasites must cross the void of shared atmosphere via hot air balloons to colonize its sister planet.
Orbitsville (1975): Another BSFA Award Winner and first book in a trilogy, this novel focuses on humanity’s discovery of a Dyson sphere (a massive habitable shell enclosing a star) and its response to this miraculous new frontier.
A Wreath of Stars (1976): What at first appear to be ghost sightings in an African diamond mine turn out to be the inhabitants of an anti-neutrino world co-existing within our own — an entire planet occupying the same space as Earth.
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