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.