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Jack Vance is one of the giants of science fiction and winner of Edgar and Hugo Awards. The Dragon Masters was his first Hugo Award-winning novel, one of only 50 or more Hugo Award-winning novels, and thus a true sf classic.
Jack Vance has been central to the sf and fantasy worlds for half a century. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says, "He has a genius of place." Like Zelazny and Bester, he has had enduring appeal because his work was forward-thinking and radical for its time. In The Dragon Masters, the first of ibooks' definitive reissues of his work, Vance develops several races of people and follows the life of a boy born into and growing up in a static, stratified society, in which he comes into conflict and is eventually driven into rebellion. "A Rebel Without a Cause" for an Alien world.
Men have been at war for centuries with the reptilian race called "Basics." As conquerors always have, the winners of each bloody encounter have made slaves of the losers-but in this far-future war, each side has improved upon its slaves with genetic engineering. And so at last there came to be two neighboring worlds: Aerlith, where men have raised a race of fearsome dragons to be their servants, and nearby Coralyne, where the descendants of those very dragons are served by strong, savage mutants who once were human. Inevitably, those two worlds would meet in one final contest. . . .
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