Wednesday, 26 August 2026

The Masterworks

At the back of my copy of Clifford Simak's City, there is a two-page list of eighty nine (or thereabouts) titles in this SF Masterworks series. Only one, Tau Zero, is by Poul Anderson.

There are:

1 title by Robert Heinlein
1 by Larry Niven
1 by Frank Herbert
1 by Clifford Simak
2 by James Blish
2 by Greg Bear
2 by Michael Moorcock
2 by Kurt Vonnegut
2 by Ursula le Guin
2 by Richard Matheson
3 by Robert Silverberg
3 by Samuel R. Delaney
3 by Brian Aldiss
3 by Olaf Stapledon
3 by Frederik Pohl + 1 by Pohl & Cyril Kornbluth
5 by HG Wells
5 by Arthur C. Clarke
14 by Philip K. Dick

- and thirty other authors are represented by only a single title. (This includes two titles with two authors.) If anyone else has a copy of this edition, please check my numbers. I don't always get the same total when I re-count.

(Blish's two titles are his Tetralogy in a single volume and Volume III of his Trilogy, Volumes I and II being historical fiction and fantasy, respectively.)

Needless to say, I disagree with any scale of values that gives Anderson one volume and Dick fourteen.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm reasonably sure Anderson himself would not agree with the high rating many have given TAU ZERO. I've read elsewhere that he was not satisfied with the pub. text, but pressure from his publisher forced him to turn in a text he would far rather have rewritten. I've thought of STARFARERS, pub. late in his life, as a far better analog of TAU ZERO.

I've read some of Dick's stories, but they never really "grabbed" me.

Ad astra! Sean