When gene hacker Alex Sharkey helps a super-smart girl turn a genetically-engineered doll into a new species he accidentally gives history a dangerous shove

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at centre of its own bewildering world. A stranger has come, with an impossible demand, and something unthinkable is released. Soon the city is gripped by an alien terror. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground and a reckoning is due at the city's heart, in the vast edifice of Perdido Street Station.

This is the story of a prisoner's journey. The search for the island of a forgotten people, for the most astonishing beast in the seas, and ultimately for a fabled place - a massive wound in reality, a source of unthinkable power and danger.

Set in futuristic Tokyo, rebuilt after an earthquake, this book is the story of a rock star who decides to marry a non-existent, virtual reality girl; the bemused American security consultant who has been sent to take care of him; and a teenage fan.

The last of the Sprawl trilogy: the AIs of Neuromancer have suffered a traumatized, cataclysmic coming to self-awareness and now haunt cyberspace as voodoo powers.

Neuromancer is the most influential science fiction novel of our time. Cyberspace and virtual reality were invented in this book. It changed forever the way we look at tomorrow and was the inspiration behind the blockbuster film The Matrix. In 2009 it celebrates its 25th Anniversary.