This is the first volume in the series of novels Doris Lessing calls collectively Canopus in Argos: Archives. Presented as a compilation of documents, reports, letters, speeches and journal entries, this purports to be a general study of the planet Shikasta, clearly the planet Earth, to be used by history students of the higher planet Canopus and to be stored in the Canopian archives. For eons, galactic empires have struggled against one another, and Shikasta is one of the main battlegrounds. Johar, an emissary from Canopus and the primary contributor to the archives, visits Shikasta over the millennia from the time of the giants and the biblical great flood up to the present. With every visit he tries to distract Shikastans from the evil influences of the planet Shammat but notes with dismay the ever-growing chaos and destruction of Shikasta as its people hurl themselves towards World War III and annihilation.

The second novel in the Classic series "Canopus in Argos: Archives". A tale of love and the anicent battle between men and woman.

The third volume of Lessing's visionary series is the first-person account of Ambien II, a female ruler of the Sirian empire who slowly realizes how sophisticated the Canopus empire is and attempts to effect a similar society

The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 is the fourth volume in Doris Lessing's celebrated space fiction series, 'Canopus in Archives'.

The fifth volume of the author's "Canopus in Argos" series focuses on the madness and false promise of words, rhetoric-induced delusion, as suffered by a young Canopean official in the small Volyen Empire

Even as it gives an epic account of the struggles between Canopus and its rivals over the fate of the universe, 'Canopus in Argos' comments, with Lessing's characteristic insight and eloquence, on human history and our prospects for the future.