I recently became completely obsessed with the two Masterworks series published by Gollancz, the genre imprint of Orion publishing.

The SF masterworks, now spanning seventy books, came first, followed by the Fantasy, which has reached fifty but–given the nature of the two genres–is probably way ahead in sheer weight of paper by now. (Strictly speaking, there’s also a Crime masterworks series, although it doesn’t seem to be receiving the same kind of support, and apparently many of the thirty or so books are already out of print and hard to find.)

Anyway, it recently occurred to me that as someone who writes mainly fantasy and sci-fi, and who frankly wasn’t very widely read in either genre, here was an opportunity to provide myself with a good education. And these really are both fantastic series. Obviously no one will agree with all 120 choices, and there are some eccentricities in there (Philip K Dick dominates the SF masterworks to an inexplicably disproportionate degree) and of course some glaring omissions (No Asimov? Four H. G. Wells books but no Jules Verne?). Equally, some of the books have brief introductions by modern writers like Neil Gaiman, but most don’t, which is a real shame.

But–for someone like me, who loves genre writing and yet, for whatever reason, hasn’t read anything like enough of it–they’re fascinating, and provide a wonderful opportunity and sense of history. More than anything, by including authors from Rudyard Kipling to Lovecraft to Ray Bradbury to Lord Dunsany, they give an unprecedented sense of how wide genre fiction can cast its nets. I’m only about twenty books in, but I’ve discovered some astounding authors, and especially on the fantasy front my eyes have really been opened. I had an irrational dislike of epic fantasy until I discovered Jack Vance’s Lyonesse trilogy; I thought, as I imagine a lot of people do, that modern fantasy pretty much began with Tolkien.

The end result of my obsession was a fairly sizable and bank-account emptying transaction on e-bay. The long and the short of it is that the entirety of both series are on their way to me, fingers crossed and a prayer to whatever deity controls the whims of Australian sea mail.

Over the next few weeks I plan, time allowing, to make a start on reviewing them here on the S & F blog. Hopefully as time goes on the reviews will gather into a handy cut-out-and-keep collection, or something like that.

First, tomorrow: Roadside Picnic, by the brothers Strugatsky.