Reception
While "The Last of the Masters" was little noticed in the years immediately following its publication, it was reviewed after its 1980 publication in The Golden Man collection. Fellow science fiction writer Thomas M. Disch reviewed Dick's The Golden Man collection among other works in "Fluff and Fizzles", an essay dated to 1979, but published in a 1980 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. While celebrating several stories in the collection, and proclaiming to readers the "categorical imperative" of buying a copy, he nonetheless derided most of its contents as "turkeys", citing specifically "The Last of the Masters" as an example. Referring to the story as "a hyperkinetic foray into hairy-chested-style hugger-mugger", Disch also mocked its "action-packed denouement" involving Edward Tolby as an example of "bogus machismo".
In her 1982 review of the Golden Man collection, Hazel Pierce lauded the sophistication of the story, summarizing the theme of "The Last of the Masters" as an examination of "the paradoxical cast of human existence."
Read more about this topic: The Last Of The Masters
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)