As lines snake round the block for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we invite you to avoid the crowds by checking out the intergalactic offerings in our archives. Start with our December 2009 issue, “Out of This World: International Science Fiction,” which presents extracts from Polish master Stanisław Lem’s first novel and Chinese sensation Liu Cixin’s Ball Lightning. From there, pack your light saber for our July 2012 issue of otherworldly Japanese fiction and check out EnJoe Toh’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire,” with its timely homage: “Galactic Empire, you’re my only hope.” And on the graphic side, don’t miss our two extracts from The Eternonaut, Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López’s classic tale of heroism in the face of nuclear disaster. Oesterheld, who was active in protesting Argentina’s military dictatorship, was disappeared and presumed dead in 1977, and  López had to flee the country for Spain; their thinly veiled political allegory lives on in their hero, Juan Salvo, a symbol of the eternal struggle against oppression. If the extracts leave you longing for more, you’re in luck: the book, in Erica Mena’s translation, has just been published by Fantagraphics. You can skip the multiplex for your personal screen and WWB, bringing you the world (and beyond).

Image: From “The Eternonaut, Part II,” by Héctor G. Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López, translated by Erica Mena