Adams, Douglas — there is a single-volume omnibus (is that redundant?) with his collected works.  that would be a nice readers’ copy to own.  Adams certainly had a huge influence on the history of SF … but not one of my personal favorites.  Does it need to be in my collection? I can always get it from the library.

Anderson, Poul — I have a volume of collected stories.  What I would like to have: a first of Tau Zero and (maybe) a complete run of the Flandry and van Rijn series.

Anthony, Piers — I’ll deal with his fantasy in a separate section.  In the meantime, there is an argument to be made for Macroscope.

Asimov, Isaac — the first unqualified “must” in this section.  I want the best possible editions of all the Foundation books.  The Robot books are a lower priority.  The End of Eternity might be higher than the Robot books.

Who else am I missing?   more tk …

More to come …

I started reading this once and stopped part way through because I thought the idea of a dragon living inside a star was too silly for belief. I came back to this book after reading the author’s second book, SPIDER STAR, and made it all the way through this time. It was worth it. There was a satisfying science fictional explanation for everything.

The one weak spot that still remains is the premise that a corporation would send a hunting party to capture a “star dragon” and start casting nets and firing off photon torpedoes right away. It seems a lot more likely that super smart people in the 26th Century would start the same way we would start today, i.e. with a couple of years of careful, passive observation. After all, they flew 250 light years to find this thing, what’s the hurry?