A man arrives out of nowhere who claims never to have seen the sun before. A professor announces a lecture on a mysterious phenomenon called the Blind Spot, which will prove the existance of life after death--and then disappears. This novel from 1921 is one of the first to approach the concept of parallel universes. It's also really, really cheesy.

In this eerie, powerful early sci-fi novel, an earth man named Maskull is guided by the mysterious being called Karg on a spiritual and philosophical journey to another world, where he encounters some very strange things indeed. Was a major influence on CS Lewis's equally strange science fiction novels.

Robert Sheckley is a sadly underrated sci-fi writer whose work has a sharp satiric edge. In this story, originally published in Galaxy Magazine in the 1950s, a homicidal maniac wants to buy a psychiatry machine to cure him, but unfortunately buys one built for Martians...

This unauthorized sequel to War of the Worlds from 1898 has none other than Thomas Edison inventing spaceships and death rays, then leading an Earth fleet off to Mars to show those Martians the what-for. It's not exactly what you'd call good, but it's very interesting, especially in the way it anticipates later sci-fi, real-world space exploration, and pop mythology. (It's the first work of S...

published in 1940