New SF Masterworks

According to their latest catalogue, and following on from Dune (#71), it looks like Orion are going to continue reissuing the SF Masterworks they originally published in hardback (lacking the pbk rights) as 'cased' editions. The Man in the High Castle (#72, July), Childhood's End (#73, August), and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (#74, December) are all teed up thus far. I hope A Canticle for Liebowitz, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Day of the Triffids follow next year, although if they're already recycling the previously published hardbacks, one does wonder how Orion is going to struggle to SF Masterwork #100, where the series apparently will be put to bed. We could all have expired by then, however, seeing as it has taken nearly 10 years to get this far. I completed my collection yesterday with the purchase of Rendezvous with Rama. :)

I'm delighted about this as I missed out on the hardbacks the first time around (I'm still haunted by seeing a big stack of them for £1 each at a bookshop in Chichester UK that was closing, only to return a few days later to find that it had, indeed, closed...) and they are now going for loopy sums on Abebooks et al.

I too missed out on the hardback Masterworks, although I have all the paperback ones (bar #70). I also have all the Fantasy Masterworks too. So I like the idea of them re-issueing them as part of the "paperback" series. If they do that, it still leaves 22 more titles for them to find... I wonder how many Dick ones they'll include in that?

I was under the impression that they were only going up to 75 books.

However, if they are going up to a hundred, I would love to see some of the mainstream SF classics there, like 1984, Brave New World, some of the older classic authors that have been missed, like Issac Asimov, and some of the newer classics, like Neuromancer. I also think that there should be at least one book by each of the "Grand Masters", but that's just my opinion.

It seems to me that the main value of this series is to get worthy classics that has been out of print back into print. That's not really an issue with books like 1984, and not with the grand so-called masters ( ;-) ) either.

#4

Rubbish. There are lots of books that could be got back in print. Looking at the following list - Camp Concentration, The Big Time, City and Riverworld all jump out as worthy books that are out of print. However I don't think that Gollancz own the paperback rights to those.

Not published in Series*
=================
Robert A. Heinlein (1975) - only 2 books in print in the UK
Jack Williamson (1976) - no SF books in print in the UK
Clifford D. Simak (1977) - no SF book in print in the UK
L. Sprague de Camp (1979) - no SF worthy IMO
Fritz Leiber (1981) - The Big Time not in print in the UK.
Andre Norton (1984) - No SF book in print in the UK
Isaac Asimov (1987)
Ray Bradbury (1989)
Lester Del Rey (1991) - would have to be a collection IMO
Damon Knight (1995) - no SF books in print in the UK
A. E. Van Vogt (1996) - no SF books in print in the UK
Philip José Farmer (2001) - no SF books in print in the UK
Anne McCaffrey (2005)
Harlan Ellison (2006) - no SF books in print in the UK; would need to be a collection
James Gunn (2007) - No SF novels worthy IMO

* some books are available to buy but they are US imports either through specialist shops or amazon. I only checked by doing a quick amazon trawl and did not look at Books In Print.

Published in series
=============
Arthur C. Clarke (1986)
Alfred Bester (1988)
Frederik Pohl (1993)
Jack Vance (1997)
Poul Anderson (1998)
Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) (1999)
Brian W. Aldiss (2000)
Ursula K. Le Guin (2003)
Robert Silverberg (2004)
Michael Moorcock (2008)

It didn't stop them including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in the series. Not so long ago, I counted five different editions of the book on the shelves of my local Waterstone's (including the Masterworks one). Didn't stop them including Dune, either...

@andyl: That's rather a longer list of authors than usual to put under the label "the grand master". I completely agree with you about most of those. I have an allergy to Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke and Heinlein (excepting the late novels), but that's my problem I guess.

When it comes to 1984, Brave New World, and so forth, I persist, though I assume one could come up with other classic slip stream that while not out of print could use some hype in SF circles, such as We, Kallocain, and so forth.

However, while I would like to see great books like these pushed to regular SF readers, I suspect it might actually hurt the SF Masterworks series, by not living up to the expectations of the readers they have built up so far.

The authors listed are the SFWA Grand Masters.

Never heard of Kallocain (there doesn't seem to be a UK edition at all) but there has just been a recent reissue of We by Vintage.

Kallocain is a 1940 novel similar in theme to 1984. In English there only seems to be US edition in print.

#5 What are the two Heinlein novels? I can guess one is the execrable Starship Troopers, and then only because of the Verhoeven film.

Ellison... I wouldn't piss on his books if they were on fire. Or on him, for that matter.

Has McCaffrey actually written anything that's not some horrible twee power fantasy for prepubescents? (Um, on reflection, minus the "twee", that description pretty much holds for most science fiction...)

I'd suggest the Foundation trilogy, because It probably belongs in there. But I wouldn't bother reading it again because it's pretty poorly written.

Sorry make that 3 novels.

Starship Troopers; Stranger In A Strange Land; and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. All three published by Hodder.

As for McCaffrey there is Restoree which is a SF/Romance story. Also The Ship Who Sang is a pretty good concept for the late 60s - just ignore the much-later sequels. One of the constituent stories was on the Nebula novella short list along with Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog".

While I might not piss on Ellison, I'd certainly try and save his books from the fire. I can separate the man from his work, and some of his work is very good indeed. It'd have to be a collection of short stories, natch. I don't think he's written anything of novel length - certainly nothing notable of novel length.

The Essential Ellison is still in print, or at least available new from Amazon. This might make it difficult for Orion to obtain the rights to enough good Ellison stories.

From the list of Grand masters, I think both Damon Knight and Ray Bradbury might best be represented by short story collections.