Set in a near-future dystopia, the novel follows a skilled programmer pursued after years on the run; his escape relies on creating and deploying computer programs to confuse trackers and undermine the systems that control society.

Set in a future where humans live isolated beneath a mechanical infrastructure, the story follows individuals who rely entirely on a pervasive Machine for daily needs and communication.

Set in a far-future, quasi-medieval city, the novel follows Severian, an apprentice in a torturers' guild, whose expulsion forces him to leave his home and travel into a decaying world.

A mid-20th-century science-fiction novel that follows a determined protagonist caught in a personal quest for vengeance within a richly constructed twenty-fifth-century milieu.

Set in late-19th-century London, the novel follows an agent involved in espionage for an unnamed foreign power amid a small circle touched by anarchist agitation. The book traces the effects of political plotting and covert operations on ordinary lives, especially relationships marked by dependency and vulnerability.

A contemporary Black woman living in 1970s Los Angeles is repeatedly pulled back in time to a Maryland plantation in the early 19th century, where she encounters ancestors and must navigate slavery's social and moral realities to survive and return to her own time.

Set in a near future where disease is mostly cured, a woman given a terminal diagnosis becomes the object of a reality program that wants to televise her final days. She resists being packaged for entertainment, unaware that a reporter bearing covert cameras is recording her without consent.

Set during an interstellar war, a poet-linguist is recruited to decipher an enemy language—Babel-17—that appears linked to acts of sabotage. The central pressure is linguistic: does learning or speaking a language alter perception and agency, and can decoding or revising that language stop further attacks?

A man’s dreams have the power to change the real world, and those around him — including a psychiatrist — must confront the consequences of shaping reality through unconscious wishes.