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| Gollancz is reissuing books already in the series with new covers and introductions as well as adding new titles to the series. However, the new titles are not numbered like the original series. Here is the list from wikipedia and here is a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks#cite_note-2
The Forever War** Joe Haldeman
I Am Legend** Richard Matheson
Cities in Flight** James Blish
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?** Philip K. Dick
The Stars My Destination** Alfred Bester
Babel-17** Samuel R. Delany
Lord of Light** Roger Zelazny
The Fifth Head of Cerberus** Gene Wolfe
Gateway** Frederik Pohl
The Rediscovery of Man** Cordwainer Smith
Inverted World Christopher Priest
Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut
Childhood's End Arthur C. Clarke
The Island of Doctor Moreau H. G. Wells
Dhalgren Samuel R. Delany
The Time Machine H. G. Wells
Helliconia Brian Aldiss
The Food of the Gods H. G. Wells
The Body Snatchers Jack Finney
The Female Man Joanna Russ
Arslan M. J. Engh
Greybeard Brian Aldiss
* Year of original publication.
** Also published in the SF Masterworks numbered pb series. |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | Yeah, I've been meaning to update those lists for some time now. I guess I'll just tack them on the end in publication order since they did away with the numbering. Strange decision to kill the numbers. I think the numbering is a great incentive to collect them all. Having gaps in the sequence would drive me nutty and I'd have to buy them just to have a complete set. No numbers means I can skip volumes on purpose or even accidentally. Bad idea. |
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| im kind of disappointed by some of the new choices. The Food of the Gods, the Body Snatchers, and Arslan seem like a waste because there are so many more important works worth adding. Foods of Gods is such a minor work compared to Wells five others books in the series, Body Snatchers is only remembered because of the movie (I hate when that happens with the exception of 2001), and Arslan has hardly any recognition from what I can find. The point of the series is to create a definitive collection of science fiction literature and these three (maybe with the exception of Food of the Gods) dont sit well among the other titles. The only book I did not think fit well in the original series was Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock which says a lot about a series consisting of almost 80 books. I hope instead works by A. E. Van Vogt, Asimov, Simak, Ellison, or Varley are added in the future instead of books like the Body Snatchers that have no weight in the genre.
By the way, the sf masterworks list on the site is missing A Canticle for Leibowitz and Left Hand of Darkness which were in the hardcover series of ten. |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | Yeah, I could not figure out how to work in the hardcover books so I just left them out. Now that the numbering scheme is meaningless I'll likely tack them on the end with the new volumes.
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Location: Dallas, Texas | I've added a bunch of the new additions to the SF Masterworks list: - Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Inverted World by Christopher Priest
- Arslan by M. J. Engh
- Helliconia by Brian Aldiss
- The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
- Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
- The Female Man by Joanna Russ
- Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
- The Food of the Gods by H. G. Wells
- The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
- The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
Graybeard by Brian Aldiss is on the Wikipedia list that dabeef111 posted above but it comes out next year. I'll keep adding them if you guys help me find them. |
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| dabeef111: I agree some of the new books seem a bit random and not exactly master works. I am curious why you think Dancers at the End of Time does not fit? |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | I've added Greybeard by Brian Aldiss to the Masterworks list now that I've found a cover for it. It should be out in a matter of months. These are the books listed as forthcoming on Wikipedia: Only a few of these are missing from our DB. When I find the new covers I'll add them to the list. Of these, I've only read Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. I'm OK with them being labeled Masterworks. What do you guys think about the others? |
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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | The more Olaf Stapledon, the better :-) Also happy to see "The Difference Engine" in the series. I read "Hyperion" quite recently and simply loved it. The structure of the book is a wonderful literary experiment. I believe "The Fall of Hyperion" is very different and is written in a conventional style. Maybe I'll add it too my reading list for next year.
It is also encouraging to see "Frankenstein" included in the series. But I can't help but wonder why only now. And it does seem that the series is adding some works randomly with no real inclination why certain works is or should be considered as "masterworks." |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | I've just added 4 more books to the SF Masterworks list - three of which are new to WWEnd. While I was at it I re-arranged the un-numbered volumes (those after 73) because apparently they are still numbered but not on the covers, go figure.     |
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| I noticed you never added in the hardcovers. You might just want to add in the ones that were never in paperback:
The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
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Location: Dallas, Texas | dabeef111 - 2011-05-29 12:26 PM I noticed you never added in the hardcovers. You might just want to add in the ones that were never in paperback: The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham Yeah, I was going to just tack them on the end but the problem is that it will mess up the sequencing. Since there's no solution I like I'm going to ignore the hardbacks for now. It does pain me not to have those 3 excellent books in the list but they just don't seem to fit.
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Location: Irving, TX | Is the hardback numbering different? |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | icowrich - 2011-06-01 1:35 PM Is the hardback numbering different? Yes. There are only 10 hardcover SF Masterworks and 7 of those are also in the softcover series. I'm guessing they didn't sell so they discontinued them early on. |
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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Why not add them to the end, or did I miss something? |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | Emil - 2011-06-01 2:23 PM Why not add them to the end, or did I miss something? I CAN tack them on the end but more books are coming out still that have to be kept in order. The best I can do is tack them on the end and then as new ones come out I can insert them between the last paperback in the series and the 3 hardcovers - thus keeping the hardcovers always at the end. The problem is that it will require explanation and people who don't know why we did it that way will tell me I've got it wrong. I'd rather the list be correct - as it is now - and not need explanation because of 3 books that are not part of the softcover series. The hardcover books are a separate series with only 3 unique books out of a mere 10 with no more coming. It's a dead end. |
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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Ach so! Well, as an old native North American saying goes: if you realise you're flogging a dead horse, best to dismount! I didn't know the hb and pb were actually seperate releases. Pity, because those 3 are remarkable! Thanks anyway for the excellent work in keeping it all on track. |
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Location: Irving, TX | Well, we can be comforted by the fact that those three books won awards and are therefore in the WWEnd database already. |
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| http://sffmasterworks.blogspot.com/
On a related note I have been meaning to give you all a heads up. The people at SFF Masterworks blog were quiet for some period of time (one or two reviews every several weeks) but they have lately added a good number of reviews (seven-ish). So as a heads up they recently reviewed (all in the last week or two):
SF Masterworks #71: Frank Herbert, Dune
SF Masterworks #38: H.G. Wells, The First Men in ...
SF Masterworks #16: Ursula Le Guin, The Disposses..
SF Masterworks #28: Theodore Sturgeon, More Than ...
SF Masterworks #25: Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Alg...
SF Masterworks #89: Dan Simmons, Hyperion
SF Masterworks #82: Jack Finney, The Body Snatche...
Even a pair of fantasy classics:
Fantasy Masterworks #8: Robert E. Howard, The Con...
Fantasy Masterworks #39: Evangeline Walton, The M... |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | Yeah, they're killing it now with all the reviews recently. They're making it hard to read them all putting out so many at the same time methinks but it's still cool.
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Location: Grootfontein, Namibia | Thanks for this, @Wintermute. I do agree with Dave here - it's tough to keep up with their posts. But once we're caught up perhaps it's an easier task to remain "up to date". |
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| I am afraid to read the reviews because I worry that any fantastic twists will be spoiled. Funny. I have resolved to not read the reviews of books that are on my reading list but only those I have not considered. Then if they are good I put them on the reading list. Hopefully, by the time I get to them, I will not remember the twist or catch. For a person who enjoys book reviews it is strange that they also makes me anxious. The SFMasterworks blog is a good one. |
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| I read the review for Dune over at the SFMasterworks blog and was taken aback by the reviewer's tisk-tisk criticism of Herbert's treatment of homosexuality. If you're wondering, like me, what homosexuality?, what treatment?, then just take a quick look at the third to last paragraph of the review: http://sffmasterworks.blogspot.com/2011/06/sf-masterworks-71-frank-...
The reviewer complains that the main villain is a homosexual and that the main villain's preference for youth implicitly connects pedophilia and homosexuality. The reviewer notes their distaste with several euphemistic words of being "troubled" and finding it "odd". But leaves open the possibility, with the line "is troublesome at best", that perhaps the author's true feelings / understanding of homosexuality is not to be discussed in polite company.
I think the whole notion is absurd and but most importantly, it unfairly castigates the author as either too dumb to know he has latent anti-homosexual feelings or is manifestly conflating evil with homosexuality.
The main villain is a homosexual, so what? He's also corpulent. And older. His homosexuality - assuming it is a willfully malevolent character trait - is incidental to his general evil-ness. It isn't even tertiary should you want to describe him (maybe quaternary?, or quinary, senary I can see, septenary is probably too far down the list, octonary shows I am just showing off, nonary has a funny ring to it, and denary sounds like a yogurt brand).
The villain prefers youth. So do many men. Chairmen Mao slept with young teen girls. Does that make him a pedophile? Or a predatory, megalomaniac, murderous tyrant that takes full advantage of the debauch available to him? Harkonnen is the same type of monster. Someone who has limitless power and attaches their ravenous maw to the nape of innocents.
It is a cheap and overly sensitive reaction to a tangential aspect of the book. But the reviewer made it one of the key points of the review and most unfairly implied the author should be ashamed of himself. Nonsense. |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | I don't remember the homosexuality being a big deal in the book. I guess we all key in on different things when we read a book. I'll be skipping that review. |
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| I see 14 more have been added since R.U.R. and War with the Newts :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks
Now the "new" unnumbered series has 44 entries, is it worth splitting them into a separate list cf. the original numbered 73? |
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Location: Dallas, Texas | htaccess - 2011-08-07 5:29 AM I see 14 more have been added since R.U.R. and War with the Newts : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks Now the "new" unnumbered series has 44 entries, is it worth splitting them into a separate list cf. the original numbered 73? I thought about that some time ago but decided to keep them together since the new ones are a continuation of the old series name. If they had re-named the series to "New SF Masterworks" or something like that then maybe. I'm glad they didn't mess with the name at least. I like a list that keeps growing. It keeps the conversation going which makes it more interesting to me.
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Location: Dallas, Texas | We added a whole mess of new SF Masterworks to the site a few weeks ago:     
   
You are now farther away from reading them all. |
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New SF Masterworks