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Hall, Hal W

Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author, Critic.

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(1941-    ) US bibliographer, Special Formats Librarian at Texas A & M University Library until his retirement in August 2010. His useful series of Bibliographies began with his SFBRI/Science Fiction Book Review Index, starting with SFBRI: Science Fiction Book Review Index, Volume 1, 1970 (1971 chap), with an annual continuation published in each succeeding year up to SFBRI: Science Fiction Book Review Index, Vol 15, 1984 (1985 chap); since then the series continued with an expanded title, beginning with Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Index, Vol 16, 1985 (1988 chap) and continuing until Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Index, Vol 21, 1990 (1994). The series was also presented, with additions, as a cumulative sequence comprising Science Fiction Book Review Index 1923-1973 (1975), Science Fiction Book Review Index 1974-1979 (1981) and Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Index 1980-1984 (1985), the last with Geraldine L Hutchins. All are most useful to the researcher in the period covered: comprehensive and accurate, they contain also a great deal of data about sf magazine publication. On this latter subject Hall has published A Checklist of Science Fiction Magazines (1972 chap) and, with Kenneth R Johnson and George Michaels, The Science Fiction Magazines: A Bibliographical Checklist of Titles and Issues through 1982 (1983 chap).

A second series of reference works, the Science Fiction Research Index, began with Science Fiction Research Index, Vol 1 (1979 chap) continuing until Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Index, Volume 9 (1992 chap). This series was eventually absorbed into and supplanted by the monumental Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index, 1878-1985: An International Author and Subject Index to History and Criticism (1987 2vols), itself supplemented by Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index: 1985-1991 (1993) and Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index: 1992-1997 (1997). From that point, Hall's researches were incorporated into separate sections in the annual bibliographies edited, under the aegis of Locus, by Charles N Brown and William G Contento, beginning with Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror: 1988 (1989) and ending with Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror: 1991 (1992). There are, of course, omissions – it is not possible to examine the review pages of every newspaper in the world – but these works are the best available for determining the location of reviews and articles on anything over a wide remit from Cyberpunk through Night of the Living Dead to J R R Tolkien.

The continually expanding computer database in which all this material has been stores also contains information on the location of important sf/fantasy book and magazine Collections, and Hall has published various articles on this subject – one written with Neil Barron in Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction, Third Edition (1987) edited by Barron – and one book, Science/Fiction Collections: Fantasy, Supernatural & Weird Tales (1983). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Index series has been cumulated and is available online. It includes all the previously published material in the research index series, currently providing access to 89,000 entries in the database.

Hall is on the editorial board of the magazine extrapolation. In 2000 he was awarded the Science Fiction Research Association's Pilgrim Award, followed by the SFRA Thomas D Clareson Award Award in 2009. [JC/PN]

see also: Critical and Historical Works About SF.

Halbert Weldon Hall

born Waco, Texas: 29 October 1941

works

nonfiction

series

Science Fiction Research Index/SFBRI

SFBRI yearly

SFBRI cumulative

Science Fiction Research Index

Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index

individual titles

works as editor

links

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