Sci Fi Web Novels

Sci Fi web novels with public chapters on NovelCult.

A Princess of Mars

In A Princess of Mars, John Carter is transported to a Mars inhabited by strange civilizations and embarks on various adventures on his quest home. Often held up as a seminal example of pulp science fiction, A Princess of Mars is the first entry in Burroughs’ epic Martian series, and the first to feature the character of John Carter. Though often categorized as just a pulp adventure tale, A Princess of Mars was hugely influential on many budding science fiction writers, professional scientists, and explorers of the day.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 29 ch

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is perhaps James De Mille’s most popular book; sadly, De Mille didn’t get to see this novel grow in popularity, as it was first serialized posthumously, in Harper’s Weekly. De Mille had written the novel before the “lost world” genre had become saturated, meaning many of the ideas were fresh and original for the time in which it was written. But, since he didn’t succeed in publishing it during his lifetime, by the time the novel was made public other authors like H.

James De Mille · Sci Fi · 33 ch

Armageddon 2419 A.D.

Armageddon 2419 A.D. features the introduction of Buck Rogers, the famous sci-fi adventure hero of early comics and radio shows. Originally published in Amazing Stories in 1928, this novella was later combined with Nowlan’s sequel, The Airlords of Han, and re-published under this same title in the 1960s.

Philip Francis Nowlan · Sci Fi · 13 ch

At the Earth’s Core

At the Earth’s Core, published in 1914, is the first of a series of science fiction novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs set inside a hollow earth with a central “sun,” a land called Pellucidar. However unlikely this scenario, it allowed Burroughs free play to create heroic adventures in yet another alien environment in addition to his fantastic version of Mars in his Martian series. The story’s hero, David Innes, is recruited by an old man, Perry, to help fund his invention, a “mechanical subterranean prospector,” and then to test it out.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 16 ch

From the Earth to the Moon

In search of an occupation after the end of the Civil War, the Baltimore Gun Club undertakes the design and construction of a cannon capable of launching a projectile to the Moon. The three main protagonists—Impey Barbicane, president of the Gun Club, Captain Nicholl, Barbicane’s rival and then collaborator, and Michel Ardan, a French scientist—board the hollow cannonball en route to the Moon. The story concludes in Autour de la Lune, the sequel published four years later.

Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 28 ch

Herland

Three male explorers set out to reach a legendary land where only women live, and find—to their surprise—that the legends are true. This country hidden in the mountains is a feminist utopia. There are no men, nor is there war, poverty, or crime.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman · Sci Fi · 12 ch

In the Days of the Comet

In the Days of the Comet, first published in 1906, is one of H. G. Wells’ “scientific romances.” Though it’s clearly a work of science fiction in that it features the collision of a huge comet with Earth, it has a greater than usual emphasis on Wells’ typical social commentary and criticism.

H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 13 ch

Journey to the Center of the Earth

A classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne, this work is one of the most well-known subterranean fictions to this day. It inspired many similar works and adaptations. First published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre, it was quickly translated to English by several different publishers in the 1870s.

Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 45 ch

Last and First Men

Last and First Men is an extended think piece about the possible future history of humankind, extending from the 1930s into the extreme far future, hundreds of millions of years from now. It’s supposedly narrated by one of the “Last Men,” and dictated to a modern-day “First Man” by a kind of time-travel telepathy. As time moves further and further into the future, Stapledon switches to overviews of vast stretches of time rather than detailing the events in the lives of individual people.

Olaf Stapledon · Sci Fi · 18 ch

Looking Backward

In Looking Backward, well-to-do Julian West of Boston falls asleep for 113 years and awakes to find the world of 2000 fundamentally changed. An old man and his daughter care for him and take him on a tour of the new world. In the new society, a single nationalized corporation-state under a single political party guarantees work, comfort, and luxury to everyone in the “industrial army.” Looking Backward is a watershed utopian novel following in the path laid by books like Thomas More’s Utopia, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s The Year 2440.

Edward Bellamy · Sci Fi · 29 ch

Moving the Mountain

John, a man who has spent the last thirty years in Tibet recovering from a head injury and totally unaware of his surroundings, regains consciousness and returns home, only to find that society has rapidly and drastically changed. The world as he knew it has become a feminist utopia, where civil rights, efficiency, and quality are of the utmost importance. The residents do their best to explain all of the societal changes that have happened in the past thirty years to John—who they consider to be a sociological dinosaur—while also pointing out all the flaws in the system they left behind.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman · Sci Fi · 13 ch

News from Nowhere

William Guest wakes up to find himself transported to a future utopian society. This bucolic society functions despite the absence of private property, marriage, prisons, courts, schools, and central government. The people are happy, healthy, and hard working.

William Morris · Sci Fi · 32 ch

Nordenholt’s Million

As a new bacteria strain emerges and causes the collapse of the world’s food supply, wealthy and powerful Stanley Nordenholt steps forward with a plan to try to save a small, select portion of the British population. Sequestered in Scotland, he leads the group in a race between their dwindling food supply and their effort to reverse the damage caused by the bacteria as the outside world descends into chaos and starvation. Blending ecological disaster and science fiction with psychological and sociological exploration, Nordenholt’s Million asks the reader how far might they be willing to go—and at what cost—to save humanity from total disaster.

J. J. Connington · Sci Fi · 20 ch

Pellucidar

Pellucidar, the sequel to At the Earth’s Core, was published in 1915. It continues the adventures of David Innes as he returns to the hollow interior of the Earth in search of his friend Perry and his lost love Dian the Beautiful. He takes with him many tools and weapons, intent on bringing civilization to the savage world within, which is populated with dinosaurs and neolithic creatures.

Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 16 ch

Robur the Conqueror

Robur the Conqueror, also published as The Clipper of the Clouds, opens in Philadelphia at a meeting of the Weldon Institute, a club of balloon enthusiasts. A stranger named Robur asks to address the members, then tells them that the future belongs to heavier-than-air machines. He mocks the club’s giant balloon, the Go-Ahead, and insults its members until the meeting erupts in chaos.

Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 23 ch

The Absolute at Large

The Czech writer Karel Čapek wrote his novel Továrna na absolutno in 1922. It was translated into English and published by Macmillan in 1927 as The Absolute at Large. The novel is a satirical piece of science fiction, and starts with the invention of an “atomic engine” in the future year 1943 which can convert matter directly into energy.

Karel Čapek · Sci Fi · 29 ch

The Airlords of Han

The Airlords of Han, the sequel to Armageddon 2419 A.D., continues the adventures of Buck Rogers, the famous sci-fi adventure hero of early comics and radio shows. Originally published in Amazing Stories in 1929, in the 1960s this novella was later combined with Nowlan’s original piece and re-published under the title Armageddon 2419 A.D.

Philip Francis Nowlan · Sci Fi · 16 ch

The Coming Race

An engineer encounters a strange sight while exploring a mine, and reluctantly reports it to the narrator. The two descend into the mine together, but an accident causes the narrator to fall through a crevice and into a secret subterranean world. The inhabitants seem to be an offshoot of an ancient human race who have been living and evolving underground.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton · Sci Fi · 29 ch

The First Men in the Moon

Mr. Bedford, an aspiring playwright, moves to the British countryside in hope of writing a successful play that will cure his financial troubles. There, he becomes acquainted with Mr. Cavor, an eccentric and reclusive scientist, who hopes to create an anti-gravitational material. After the two men accidentally create the material, they decide to use it to land on the Moon—Cavor motivated by expanding the realms of knowledge, and Bedford by the prospective mining of lunar minerals.

H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 26 ch

The Food of the Gods

In the early twentieth century, two scientists develop a substance to promote continuous growth in plants and animals. In testing it on poultry at an experimental farm, the “Food of the Gods” is carelessly scattered about, resulting in giant insects, giant rats, and so on. When anxious parents give it to sickly children, it creates a race of giant humans.

H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 12 ch

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