M. J. Engh

Arslan is a young Asian general who conquers the world in a week without firing a shot and shortly thereafter sets up his headquarters in a small town in Illinois. A masterpiece of political science fiction and a book to challenge such works as Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed, Arslan is a book that others are now measured against. "It's about fathers and sons, about power, about a genuinely ruthless (but not unfeeling) mind in pursuit of a practical solution to the world's problems." So M. J. Engh describes Arslan. This is a novel of power and depth that is unforgettable.

Arslan

Arslan (SF Masterworks)

A third world dictator conquers and rules a dystopian America in this “wonderful and terrifying” work of political science fiction (Samuel R. Delany). By the time General Arslan brings his army from Turkistan to America, he has already conquered the rest of the world, using strategy and craft rather than bullets and bloodshed. The modern-day Genghis Khan sets up headquarters in tiny Kraftsville, Illinois, and when he asserts his power by violently assaulting an eighth-grade girl and boy—onstage, before a cheering audience of his soldiers—the townspeople know that no one is safe. Forced to open his home to the despot, Franklin Bond, the school principal whose students were publicly violated, finds himself strangely drawn to the world’s new master and privy to his quirks and mental machinations. In fact, only one other person in town will have a closer connection to Arslan during the long, hard era of his reign: Hunt Morgan, the boy the dictator brutalized before the entire town—and whom he now owns. But there is a secret side to the human monster that no one, not even Bond or Morgan, sees during these years of terror and enslavement. For Arslan has already set a grander scheme in motion: to save our world . . . by destroying it. Few works of speculative fiction have been held in higher regard—or provoked more outraged controversy—than M. J. Engh’s classic science fiction tale of the conquest of America. Brilliant and disturbing, this thought-provoking and surprising novel is an intriguing character study, a dire warning that continues to pack a devastating punch, and “without question one of the finest works of fiction of our generation” (Orson Scott Card).

Liss settles on the peaceful planet Bimran, but the natives classify her as a male because of her birth-control implant and they become obsessed about sending her to either Heaven or Hell. By the author of Arslan.

Rainbow Man

Nine boys outwit the invisible robbers who have inhabited the house in the snow for generations, by using the robbers' own cloaks of invisibility.

M. J. Engh

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