The Masterworks Meme

Pilfered wholesale from the OF Blog of the Fallen - thanks to my SFF Masterworks Reading Project comrade-in-arms Larry for doing the gruntwork! Last place I ever expected to see a meme getting off the ground anyway...

So. In bold, the books I've read. The books I own but haven't yet read are italicised.

NB: Some of the SF Masterworks were released in a line of special hardcovers - denoted by roman numerals - as well as the paperbacks we all own a few of, so there are a few duplicates in the list.

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

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

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)

 

We'll get to the Fantasy Masterworks another time.

 

For the moment, I'll be in the naughty corner, hanging my head in shame. What an embarrassment of gaps there are in my classic genre literature quotient... particularly right there in the middle of the SF Masterworks, I've read practically nothing.

 

I wonder if there's something to that? Certainly there's something of a preponderance of if not obscure then at best secondary works of fiction by Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke in the middle of the list. I wonder if perhaps the rights were going cheap and the imprint had done so well for Millennium, its original publishers, that they were happy to slap the Masterwork label on any old thing to draw out a few more sales...

 

But what do I know? Feel free to talk me around.

 

If you've got a blog of your own, do feel free to reproduce this meme and leave a link to your answers in the comments, if you will. It's all for a good cause: raising awareness about the SFF Masterworks site. You should go there, too - and check out my first review for the reading project, of Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin.