The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence (2008), Gollancz

The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence was published in 2008 by the UK-based Orion Publishing Group under their Gollancz imprint, which, simply because it specialises in Science Fiction and Fantasy, is the best book publisher ever.

Collecting 8 Books from various sub-genres in the fantasy genre,

namely; 

Fairy tales (Lud-in-The-Mist),

Sword and Sorcery (The Conan Chronicles, Elric, Lankhmar),

mythology (The Broken Sword, Lyonesse),

Slipstream/ Science fantasy ( Chronicles of Amber)

and historical fantasy (the Dragon Waiting).

Given the variety and high quality of the books in its list I suppose the UFS is meant to give a taste of the wide-ranging flavours in the Fantasy genre, with an emphasis on Literary fantasy.

Arranged here by internal order The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence consists of;

-The Conan Chronicles by Robert E. Howard (ISBN: 978-0-575-08273-1)

Edited by Stephen Jones, collecting the short stories;
'The Hyborian Age' (1936)
'The Tower of the Elephant' (1933)
'The Hall of the Dead (synopsis)' (1976)
'The God in the Bowl' (1952,1975)
'Rogues in the House' (1934)

'The Hand of Nergal (fragment)' (1976)
'The Frost-Giant's Daughter' (1953,1976)
'Queen of the Black Coast' (1934)
'The Vale of Lost Women' (1967)
'The Snout in the Dark (draft)' (1969,1979)
'Black Colossus' (1933)
'Shadows in the Moonlight' (1934)
'A Witch shall be Born' (1934)
'Shadows in Zamboula' (1935)
'The Devil in Iron' (1934)
'The People of the Black Circle' (1934)
'The Slithering Shadow' (1933)
'Drums of Tombalku (Draft)' (1966,1986)
'The Pool of the Black One' (1933)
Map of the Hyborian Age (2000)

-Elric by Michael Moorcock (ISBN: 978-0-575-08270-0)

Collecting several stories and novels;
'The Dreaming City' (1961)
'While the Gods Laugh' (1962)
'The Stealer of Souls' (1962)
'Kings in Darkness' (1962)
'The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams' (1962)
'Stormbringer' (1965,1977)

-Lankhmar  by Fritz Leiber (ISBN: 978-0-575-08274-8)

Collecting the novels;
'Swords and Deviltry'
'Swords against Death'

'Swords in the Mist'
'Swords Against Wizardry'

Though the copyright states 2001, the individual novels were actually
collected from seperate short stories. The first 2 (chronological) novels were then published in 1970, the other two in 1968.
This complete gathering of the first 4 books in the canon takes it copyright date from the Fantasy masterwork edition of the First book of Lankhmar.

-Lyonesse  by Jack Vance (ISBN: 978-0-575-08271-7)

Consisting of
'Suldrun's Garden' (1983)

-Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirlees (ISBN: 978-1-8579-8767-6)

Consists of
 'Lud-in-the Mist' (1926)

(has the honor of having the flat-out best cover in the UFS;
Sophie Toulouse's 'Fallen Angel Nation of Angela')

-The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (ISBN: 978-0-575-08272-4)

Consists of
'The Broken Sword'  (1954)

-The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny (ISBN: 978-0-575-08269-4)

Collecting the novels;
'Nine Princes in Amber' (1970)
 'The Guns of Avalon' (1972)
 'Sign of the Unicorn (1975)
 'The Hand of Oberon' (1976)
 'The Courts of Chaos' (1978)

 These are the 5 first novels of the Chronicles of Amber series. The Chronicles of Amber can be divided into two parts; 1-5 (the Corwin Cycle) and 6-10 (The Merlin cycle).
So this book can stand on its own.

-The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford (ISBN: 978-0-575-07378-4)

Consists of
'The Dragon Waiting' (1983)

Covers and artwork rundown

The beautiful Cover Illustrations are by parisian freelance artist Sophie Toulouse and the overall cover design is by UK-based independent designer Sue Michniewicz.

Credit where it is due; the covers are nicely uncluttered with only the artwork, the book's title and the author's name on a white background. On the back we have some short cover blurb, a title repetition, a short, simple postivive description of the book in general, some simple publishing details and a review quote by a famous author.

Working with only a few colours; grey, white and black for the artwork plus another single colour unique to each book which is also used for the book titles on front, back and spine.
This colour is also used for the Review quote's author name, the general description and the first letter of the Book Blurb.
The book author's name is in black on the front.

small note:
For several of my personal books this colour has been given a reflective finish which is super lovely, I assumed this depended on the printed edtition but my edition of Lankhmar kind of blows that out of the water, So I'll just give the facts rather than position a theory to this curious phenomenon;
 Elric (1st ed) blue, Lyonesse (1st ed) pink, Lud-in-the-Mist (3d ed) green, The Conan Chronicles (1st ed) silver, Lankhmar (4th ed) red, The Dragon Waiting (1st ed) cyan.  This reflective finish is present on cover and spine, but not on the back.
And I also have some books which do not have that same finish, just the same colour without reflective treament, which is just a bit sad; The Broken Sword (4th ed) orange, Chronicles of Amber (6th ed) purple.


Differences between the Fantasy Masterworks and the Ultimate Fantasy Sequence

The reason for this post is that in trying to collect these books, as usual several years too late, I had alot of trouble getting them (being not born in the UK and not having access to any good second hand english book shops), as online sellers are kind of slapdash with information.

There's not alot of information surrounding them so I looked around and from either the internet or my own finally complete set tried to compile as much information as possible.

Also, because people like to lump these books together with the Gollancz' Fantasy Masterworks series and that's obviously not actually accurate.

To that end I'll now list some differences:

In general:

Obviously the covers and ISBN numbers are different. but is there, besides the very pretty covers, any actually added value to the series?

On the whole, I'd say no, The Fantasy Masterworks actually contain some extra bit of stuff, even some things that I thought were integral to the novels.

The 'Also by the author' pages, dedications and author blurb are retained though they are always added at the back of the book.
There is a reduced number of review quotes
Index sections were left out completely.

Noteworthy differences

For The Conan Chronicles there is no afterword or index in the book that was present in the original Fantasy Masterworks edition, there are also no acknowledgements at the start of the Copyright Pages. The Map of the Hyborian Age can be found at the back.

For the Broken sword there is a notable difference in the newer U(nnumbered)FM edition, which comes with a new introduction by Michael Dirda. There is no introduction present in the original FM edition. The (unsigned) foreword by Poul Anderson is added to the back.

The Dragon Waiting has 'a historical note' and 'shadows as they pass' at the back. These are two sets of notes relating to history and characters.
There is no index and no attention is given to the FM edition's imposing typeset (used for the titles).
There really is no contest in which of the two is the superior version.

Lankhmar is another one with big differences. There's no index.
Normally every individual novel in the First book of Lankhmar (Fantasy Masterworks nr18) has a list of humorous contents and descriptions of the different acts in the book, which slyly alludes to Fritz Leiber's past on stage. In the UFS these have been left out completely.
(Also, the copyright page states that the copyright dates from 2001 which is obviously not the publication date of the original novels, but the date of publication of the Fantasy masterworks edition of the First Book of Lankhmar.)

Elric has no index. Map is at the back.

Chronicles of Amber has no index.

(I don't have any FM editions of Lud-in-the-Mist and Lyonesse so I can't really compare those)

I'll update this picture when I get the other two. Some time...

Also, feel free to point me to any new information regarding this series or correct erroneous information as I have tried to be as complete as possible, but it's easy to miss things or make errors.