"A case can be made, in purely practical terms, for Martin Gardner as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century"—David Auerbach

By his own reckoning, Martin wrote over 100 books–if magic trade volumes are included. He also engaged in extensive essaying, reviewing and correspondence. Martin's biographer Dana Richards has compiled and made available as a PDF file a brief bibliography. For other lists of his books, see Wikipedia Wikipedia in Esperanto, Seth Schoen's (in alphabetical order), North Carolina Literary Map, or the one at NicheCreator.

The bulk of Martin's writing was in the non-fiction realm, though he wrote one novel and some short shories (see Gardner's fiction), and had a fondness for old-fashioned verse.

Martin's first publication was a magic trick for the Sphinx in May of 1930. He was fifteen years old, and would go on to publish for a further 80 years, in a bewildering breadth of fields. The last publication in his lifetime was a magic trick that he contributed to the May 2010 issue of Word Ways. Happily, both tricks can be found together in this 80 Years of Gardner Magic article by Jerry & Karen Farrell.

If there is one volume that represents almost the full gamut of Martin's extraordinarily diverse interests—but not his output—it's The Night Is Large: Collected Essays, 1938–1995 (St. Martin's, 1996). This 587-page tome is divided into seven parts: Physical Science, Social Science, Pseudoscience, Mathematics, The Arts, Philosophy and Religion. Curiously, one of topics he is most often associated with, namely mathematics, gets the fewest number of pages here—a mere 40.

In his final years, Martin surprised everyone by writing his memoirs Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner, issued by Princeton University Press (Sep 2013).

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