MEME | Gollancz SF Masterworks

As noted earlier, I’m part of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Masterworks Review blog, and they’ve come up with an interesting meme, how many of these have been read? What I've bolded are books read and italics means I own it, but I’ve been meaning to read it. This list also includes new Masterwork releases coming out later this year and the first section of roman numerals of the list are a special run of hardcovers in the series, which are also in the numbered series.

I - Dune - Frank Herbert II - The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin III - The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick IV - The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester V - A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr. VI - Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke VII - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein VIII - Ringworld - Larry Niven IX - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman X - The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham

1 - The Forever War - Joe Haldeman 2 - I Am Legend - Richard Matheson 3 - Cities in Flight - James Blish 4 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick 5 - The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester 6 - Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany 7 - Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny 8 - The Fifth Head of Cerberus - Gene Wolfe 9 - Gateway - Frederik Pohl 10 - The Rediscovery of Man - Cordwainer Smith

11 - Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon (Will be reviewing) 12 - Earth Abides - George R. Stewart 13 - Martian Time-Slip - Philip K. Dick 14 - The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester 15 - Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner 16 - The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin 17 - The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard 18 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut 19 - Emphyrio - Jack Vance 20 - A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick 21 - Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon 22 - Behold the Man - Michael Moorcock 23 - The Book of Skulls - Robert Silverberg 24 - The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells 25 - Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes (Will Be reviewing) 26 - Ubik - Philip K. Dick 27 - Timescape - Gregory Benford 28 - More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon 29 - Man Plus - Frederik Pohl 30 - A Case of Conscience - James Blish

31 - The Centauri Device - M. John Harrison 32 - Dr. Bloodmoney - Philip K. Dick 33 - Non-Stop - Brian Aldiss 34 - The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke 35 - Pavane - Keith Roberts 36 - Now Wait for Last Year - Philip K. Dick 37 - Nova - Samuel R. Delany 38 - The First Men in the Moon - H. G. Wells 39 - The City and the Stars - Arthur C. Clarke 40 - Blood Music - Greg Bear

41 - Jem - Frederik Pohl 42 - Bring the Jubilee - Ward Moore 43 - VALIS - Philip K. Dick 44 - The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin 45 - The Complete Roderick - John Sladek 46 - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick 47 - The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells 48 - Grass - Sheri S. Tepper 49 - A Fall of Moondust - Arthur C. Clarke 50 - Eon - Greg Bear

51 - The Shrinking Man - Richard Matheson 52 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K. Dick 53 - The Dancers at the End of Time - Michael Moorcock 54 - The Space Merchants - Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth 55 - Time Out of Joint - Philip K. Dick 56 - Downward to the Earth - Robert Silverberg 57 - The Simulacra - Philip K. Dick 58 - The Penultimate Truth - Philip K. Dick 59 - Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg 60 - Ringworld - Larry Niven 61 - The Child Garden - Geoff Ryman 62 - Mission of Gravity - Hal Clement 63 - A Maze of Death - Philip K. Dick 64 - Tau Zero - Poul Anderson 65 - Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke 66 - Life During Wartime - Lucius Shepard 67 - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - Kate Wilhelm 68 - Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 69 - Dark Benediction - Walter M. Miller, Jr. 70 - Mockingbird - Walter Tevis

71 - Dune - Frank Herbert 72 - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein 73 - The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick 74 - Inverted World - Christopher Priest 75 - Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle 76 - H.G. Wells - The Island of Dr. Moreau 77 - Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End 78 - H.G. Wells - The Time Machine 79 - Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren (July 2010) 80 - Brian Aldiss - Helliconia (August 2010)

81 - H.G. Wells - Food of the Gods (Sept. 2010) 82 - Jack Finney - The Body Snatchers (Oct. 2010) 83 - Joanna Russ - The Female Man (Nov. 2010) 84 - M.J. Engh - Arslan (Dec. 2010

So what's my count? 15 read, with a couple that I own. Hopefully, I’ll be getting to the two books of my own, Flowers for Algernon and Last and First Men, soon, after I finish up a couple of other things, but when they’re done, they’ll be up on the SF and Fantasy Materworks Reading Blog.

Bit of an edit here, 6 or more months on. I never actually ended up getting around to finishing or reviewing either book that had been my assignment - something I've been unhappy about, but more pressing matters have come up. Hopefully though, I'll be able to get to some of them at some point in the future!

SF/F Masterworks Read

While I was overseas in England, I came across Gollancz's Science Fiction and Fantasy Masterworks series, a dedicated series of distinguished books in the genre, each with some very cool covers and a good list to start with for anyone looking to get into the genre, or at least, read through some of the fundamental reads. While it is not perfect - like any list, it's missing a number of books, and is heavily male-dominated (there are very few female authors represented, something that will hopefully change with future additions), and there's always personal preferences and new authors that will likely be added up at some point in the future.

I've joined with ten other book bloggers from around the internet blogosphere, under the direction of Patrick, who runs the book blog Stomping On Yeti, who conceived of the project after realizing that he owned all of the books, but had yet to read the hundred and twenty-three in the series, save for a handful. After a call went out to the various corners of the internet, a small group has been assembled to read through the entire list, contributing reviews on the books in the series, hopefully providing a good resource for speculative fiction fans.

I'm looking forward to helping out with this project, having read several books represented in the series, but with a couple of books that I have yet to read set to go, Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes and The Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon. Thus, the project provides a good opportunity to read several books that I haven't had a chance to get to, but also a good opportunity to reread some books in the near future that I haven't read for a couple of years.

Furthermore, the project is a cool crowd sourcing style project that brings together the writing abilities and expertise of a number of writers who largely look at new and upcoming books within the speculative fiction genre. There have been some larger literary projects, such as 1 Book, 1 Twitter, which has recently been moving through Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which brings together thousands of people reading the same book at the same time, and this one brings together a much more qualified group to look over an entire series of books as a whole.

Ultimately, I hope that there will be some good discussion not only about the books and their merits (or lack thereof), but also of the series, the selections, and multiple viewpoints on similar books to get a very comprehensive look at the books and series, but also at the underlying idea of what is Science Fiction and Fantasy, as larger genres. Finally, the last question that can hopefully be addressed is what books should be included in any sort of masterworks list? Given that a number of the contributers look to new and upcoming books, it will be interesting to see what has come out recently that will be considered a classic.One of my books is currently being read, and I'll hopefully have my reviews up and running soon enough.

The site can be found here: http://sffmasterworks.blogspot.com/