Sci-Fi Classics Stuck in Limbo

By Neal 

About a month ago, when we discovered that the Library of America was planning to publish a collection of Philip K. Dick novels, we invited science-fiction professionals to recommend more sci-fi for the American literary canon. Our request inspired Del Rey VP Betsy Mitchell to revisit the Nebula Awards, presented annually by the Science Fiction Writers of America, to see which novels, judged the best in their genre the year they were published, had fallen out of print. Here are the titles she recommended be brought back:

True, all but the Pohl are available in electronic editions, and UK readers can still get paperbacks of the Bishop and the Pohl, but these are stories that American science-fiction fans should be able to find more readily than this, not just for their historical significance—Man Plus in particular can be seen as marking a creative rebirth for Pohl—but simply because they’re darn good reads. And though Mitchell confined herself to award-winning books, you could certainly get a list twice as long from any SF fan with more novels that deserve similar restoration…