The OF Blog: New group blog established for reviewing the Gollancz Fantasy and SF Masterworks series

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

New group blog established for reviewing the Gollancz Fantasy and SF Masterworks series

Actually, this has been in the works for most of this month, but starting July 1, there will be a series of reviews over the next several months from a dozen or so online reviewers (including myself) that will cover the 130+ books on both lists, at a group blog called simply SFF Masterworks.  My first reviews will go live on Saturday, July 3, as I will cover William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland and Other Novels (Fantasy Masterworks #33) and James Blish's A Case of Conscience (SF Masterworks #30).  The Hodgson is already written (a 2100 word piece on the four novels included in this omnibus volume) and scheduled to go live at 12:04 AM on July 3, and I'll be writing the Blish review tonight and scheduling it for a few minutes afterwards.

There will be a variety of opinions and approaches to these books and I would hope regulars here will bookmark this group blog and/or add it to their RSS feeds, as it will be updated regularly.  In addition, I'll be editing the Fantasy Masterworks link in the Recommended Reading section of my links to include links to the reviews I have written, plus I will make regular Saturday posts linking to the reviews I've written (after all, I believe I said last year that my goal by the end of this year was to have read/reviewed all of the Fantasy Masterworks books.  I own them all and have only 3 left to read.  What I don't review there - that which has already been chosen - I'll review here a few months later, so there won't be any conflicts).

So...who's excited about having a one-stop resource for reviews of a series of books that one UK publisher at least thinks are among the SF/F best?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am most certainly excited. There is a serious lack of reviews for the classics.

Larry Nolen said...

Between this, my own series of reviews of Borges' works over the next five weeks, and then months devoted to Serbian writers, Gene Wolfe, participating in a Michael Moorcock one, and maybe a Gabriel García Márquez-themed month, I hope to help make sure all sorts of classics are covered, both here and elsewhere.

Bryce L. said...

Great idea, I'm really excited for this project. Thanks everyone. :)

Larry Nolen said...

Should be lots of fun.

And Bryce, I don't think it's too late to sign on, if you have the time/energy to cover 5 or so of these books.

Jen said...

This sounds really cool. I missed out on a lot of classic and I'm sure I'll add a couple more to the list now.

Paul said...

If you need them ,there are a few I could knock out off the top of my head (Gredel, Arcturus, Viriconium, etc).

Bryce L. said...

@Larry - Thanks for the invite, but the baby's due any day now and as much as I want to say yes anyway, I don't want to do you guys a disservice.

I'm positive there will either be a huge reduction or expansion in reading time soon, but I'm almost guaranteed less review writing time. :) I already know sleep's going out the window.

Hélène said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hélène said...

I'm used to reading SF as much as Fantasy. But if the SF list seems familiar to me, the Fantasy one is unchartered territory for a good part. So I look forward to your reviews : I'll probably discover new TBR books.
Great idea and great to think of Grendel.

 
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