SF Masterworks Meme

This is another one of those "long list of books" memes, in which we all try to impress each other with how much time we've spent indoors, our noses stuck inside old skiffy novels. (I got it from James Nicoll.) It is, as the name implies, a list of the book in the "SF Masterworks" series from the UK publisher Gollancz.

The standard instructions for memes like this is to bold books one has read, italicize books one owns but hasn't read yet, and strikethrough books one violently disagrees with. I also often add comments, since that's the kind of blogger I am.

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 -- what, again?
• 2 – I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
• 3 – Cities in Flight – James Blish -- I hates it, I does, but I did read it. And it is important.
• 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 -- not in this edition, but in the separate Del Rey paperbacks of the late '70s
• 11 – Last and First Men – Olaf Stapledon
• 12 – Earth Abides – George R. Stewart -- though it once featured in a contest here
• 13 – Martian Time-Slip – Philip K. Dick
• 14 – The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester
• 15 – Stand on Zanzibar – John Brunner -- I don't think I finished it, so this may be cheating.
• 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 -- I have serious issues with the "gestalt entity," and it's less than the novella ("Baby Is Three") it grew out of.
• 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 -- another book I can't stand for suspension-of-disbelief reasons
• 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
• 80 – Brian Aldiss – Helliconia
• 81 – H.G. Wells – Food of the Gods
• 82 – Jack Finney – The Body Snatchers
• 83 – Joanna Russ – The Female Man
• 84 – M.J. Engh – Arslan

I note that nearly all of the roman-numeraled titles turned up later in the main sequence, one of them very, very quickly. I'm sure this is a secret coded message from the Illuminati to their sleeper agents, and not more evidence of the weird ebb and flow of publishing.