Bantam Books is an American publishing house founded in 1945, one of the major pioneers of the mass-market paperback in the United States. For decades it was among the largest and most commercially successful paperback publishers in the country, issuing fiction and nonfiction across every popular genre.
Spectra was Bantam's science fiction and fantasy imprint, launched in the 1980s and quickly establishing itself as one of the premier homes for speculative fiction. Spectra became known for publishing ambitious, genre-defining work and for nurturing both established masters and major new voices.
Among Spectra's most significant titles is George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, the first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, which the imprint published in 1996 and which would go on to reshape modern epic fantasy. Spectra also published acclaimed authors across science fiction and fantasy.
Now part of Penguin Random House under the Random House Worlds umbrella, the Bantam and Spectra names represent a long legacy of commercially successful and critically respected genre publishing. Their catalog includes many of the most influential works of contemporary science fiction and fantasy.