So many layers, where to begin? Wild Seed piles on complex themes; power, identity,the ethics of eugenics. There’s an exploration

Elizabeth A. Lynn’s 1980 award-winner Watchtower opens her Arun trilogy as a literary-fantasy of low magic and gender-fluidity. If E.M.

Bram Stoker’s classic Gothic horror novel Dracula set the template for modern vampires. Forget the over-saturation of pop culture cliches.

C. J. Cherryh’s melancholy sci-fantasy Chronicles of Morgaine travels across and between worlds way before Grimdark became a genre of

Thieves’ World is an early example of a shared-world anthology series, where authors collaborated on stories set in a common

Unrelentingly bleak, George Orwell’s novel 1984 defined the dystopian genre. It’s depiction of a totalitarian state echoes down the decades.

Dune is the epic space opera that gave us giant sand worms, mind-expanding Spice, prophecy and warring houses. But its