Science fiction's bargain of the year - perhaps of the decade - is undoubtedly The Time Traveller's Almanac (Head of Zeus, £25).

It's edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer and, for any fan of the fourth dimension, this 948-page hardback is something of a dream come true.

To the best of my knowledge, no such ambitious anthology has ever been attempted before and the breadth of the scientific and literary choices in styles and approaches is exemplary.

Included amongst the dozens of stories from the 19th to the 21st century and from several countries are indispensable classics as well as gems rescued from obscurity.

The editors claim that The Clock That Went Backwards by Edward Page Mitchell from 1881 is the first time travel story ever published, while Greg Egan's Lost Continent (2008) is at once a cunning piece of science-fictional imagination and the most moving and inspiring piece of fiction about life as a refugee that I can remember reading.

It's also a pitiless savaging of the squalid racism of all recent Australian governments.

My other two choices are both comics of very different kinds.

The Co-operative Revolution by Polyp (New Internationalist, £5.99) is a history of the worldwide co-op movement from the Rochdale Pioneers to the present day, presented as a graphic novel.

It sounds like an entirely daft, if worthy, idea, but I promise that although you might buy it out of duty, you'll almost certainly read it for pleasure.

The art is lovely, the tone just right and the script cleverly conveys a surprising amount of information in the form of an uplifting and fascinating story.

Readers of a certain age will surely recall the fish-and-chips-fuelled runner whose adventures appeared in various weekly comics for decades from the 1940s onwards.

But younger readers might also enjoy The Best Of Alf Tupper, The Tough Of The Track (Prion, £12.99).

Raised in poverty, Alf (pictured) trains for races by running through the rainy streets of his grimy industrial hometown, when he can spare time from his day job as a welder.

Class warfare was always at the heart of this much-loved strip.

Common as muck, hard as nails, Alf is a natural gentleman, using honest hard work to outrun the cheating toffs who dominate his sport.

A superb collection, it's an annual-sized hardback with very good presentation and reproduction and it contains several rarely reprinted episodes.

Mat Coward