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Notes on Content

Entry updated 25 March 2024. Tagged: Prelim.

The notes below, from the 1993 second edition, are largely unrevised. In general we have been able to relax many constraints previously forced on us by the space limitations of a single printed volume. Some authors of short stories only, like Vance Aandahl, appeared in the first edition, were cut to save space in the second and are now restored; there are similar cases among print magazines not exclusively devoted to sf but of considerable sf interest, such The Black Cat, and borderline-sf films such as Duel (1971). But even with space effectively unlimited, the editorial team is still constrained by time. Our increased willingness to be more liberal about the borders of sf coverage is undermined by the huge proliferation within the heartland – all of which also needs to be recorded.

Entries are divided into various categories as described in 1993 (below). This was made explicit in the organization of the 1995 CD-ROM edition and has since been further refined. Entries for Authors, Artists/Illustrators, Awards, Comics, Countries, Films, Television are grouped together as in the headings below, and separate headword indexes for each can be called up on the encyclopedia website; likewise for the new or changed categories that follow. Themes and Terminology, whose distinction was always blurred, have been grouped together (again as in the CD-ROM) under Themes. Magazines and anthologies are tagged as Publications, which with the additional tag Fan also covers Fanzines. There are newly introduced tags for Characters (like Doc Savage or Superman), Critics (always in combination with Author), Editors, Games, House Names (always in combination with Author), Music, Publisher, Radio and Theatre. Film-makers and actors appear under Film but are additionally tagged People to distinguish them from films; the People tag is also used in conjunction with Television, Music and Comics to distinguish individual creators from shows, bands and comic titles. The Miscellaneous category which appears last below was renamed Community for the CD-ROM and there used to cover publishers, institutions, Conventions and various aspects of Fandom – its present use is roughly similar, although such former inclusions as Awards (see Awards for an overview), International (the country and regional entries) and Publishers have been removed from this catchall category and given their own.

Second Edition/CD-ROM

In the first edition of this encyclopedia we laid out frankly what was included and what we had chosen to leave out. Let us do so again, by examining one at a time the various subcategories (authors, themes, magazines, films, etc.) into which, for administrative purposes, we have normally divided the work when discussing its structure.

1. Authors

In the beginning it seemed very simple. In late 1976, as the first edition of this encyclopedia began to take shape, we decided that we would give an individual entry to any writer who published a book of sf in English before the beginning of 1978, as well as entries to some authors who had never published a book of their own. We had no idea how huge a task we had taken on, though it did not take us more than a couple of months to discover that our goals were unattainable.

Very soon we decided that, even with English-language book authors, we would have to exercise some discretion. We would have to exclude some authors of genre sf who seemed to have made no impact on the field in general; generally speaking these authors had published only one book and were not expected to publish any more (we did not treat authors who had only recently published a first book as one-book authors in this sense). And we would exercise a similar (though less easily defined) control over non-genre sf authors as well, especially those who wrote prior to the twentieth century.

Genre sf, by definition, had reasonably distinct boundaries, and we were able to be pretty sure (errors aside) that we had covered the territory. Non-genre sf was, however, another matter. Because many of the research aids we now take for granted had not yet been published in the mid-1970s, we only slowly discovered the hugeness of the world of non-genre sf, and how remarkably difficult it was going to be to know when to stop looking for authors who merited inclusion. In fact we never did stop finding previously unsuspected sf books of interest by non-genre writers, and we probably never will. By the time we ceased adding entries to the first edition, we found that we had given as many entries to non-genre writers as to genre ones, although our central focus on genre sf meant of course that we paid far more attention to writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert A Heinlein than to literary figures (some major, like Vladimir Nabokov) who made occasional use of sf devices. In the end, taking Authors, Editors and Critics together, we had a total of 1817 entries on individual writers in the 1979 edition.

For the second 1993 edition we eliminated about 50 of these writers, on several grounds, all of which apply also to more recent candidates for inclusion:

  1. Because of the increasingly book-oriented nature of written sf, we with reluctance decided not to give entries to writers who have not yet published a book of their own; individual stories by these writers will of course be referred to in the relevant Theme entries.
  2. Some fantasy writers, we have come to feel, did not in fact have enough impact on the sf world to warrant an entry.
  3. We no longer knowingly include writers whose books have been solely published by vanity presses.
  4. We no longer give individual entries to authors none of whose books in other languages have been translated into English (these authors are of course treated in Country entries).
  5. We eliminated a few routine one-book authors.

Having by these means reduced the total to below 1800, we then added more than 1100 new entries to the 1993 book edition. The new total of Author entries was 2900+.

Some of the new entries are devoted to authors we missed the first time around: some were culpably omitted, and some were authors neither we (nor anybody else then in print) had known were responsible for sf books, but most were authors of works in subgenres associated with sf, which we now cover more thoroughly (see below). However, more than half of the new entries are devoted to authors who published their first book after the beginning of 1978. Some writers whose impact has been negligible have been excluded deliberately, just as in 1979; and almost certainly there will be others who have been excluded in error. And we have had some new things to think about, too. There has been a huge growth, for instance, in Ties of all sorts, including a large number of shared-world productions. We have excluded very few sf authors who have solely written books tied to shared-world endeavours (like Star Wars or Star Trek), but we have excluded some authors solely of books tied (for instance) to films (novelizations), to fantasy role-playing games and also choose-your-own-plot format game books. Although we do not feel it desirable (or possible) to give an entry to every writer of sf for children, we are now much more inclusive in our coverage, leaving out mainly (it is an area extremely difficult to define) authors of sf written specifically for younger children. Finally, although the number of entries for non-genre sf writers has grown very considerably, we remain very conscious of the impossibility of definitively covering an area whose boundaries cannot be defined (but see below for genres and subgenres which, although affiliated to sf, are not sf as we understand the term). These caveats and exclusions are, we recognize, numerous enough to give us considerable latitude in our selection of authors to include or leave out. Within these terms, however, we have attempted to give an individual entry to every writer who has published an (inarguably) sf book in English – or had one translated into English – before the beginning of 1992.

In selecting fantasy and supernatural-horror authors for inclusion, we have attempted to restrict our coverage to those authors whose works have had some significant influence on the complex webs that bind the three genres together, or whose work contains many elements of rationalized fantasy or horror. In the first category, it is obvious that, the earlier a writer is, the more likely it will be that his or her work has had time to affect the world (and the genres) around him; and we have therefore given entries to writers like Algernon Blackwood, James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, E R Eddison, Robert E Howard, H P Lovecraft, George MacDonald and J R R Tolkien.

The second category is infinitely debatable, and it is here that subjective judgements have had to come into play. Much fantasy and horror makes use of idea-clusters (or tropes or motifs) that are also fundamental to sf. The four most important are perhaps Alternate History, Monsters, Psi Powers, and Time Travel. These tropes are commonly used as magical facilitating devices or threats, but sometimes they are given sufficient logical cohesion and grounding as to be readable in sf terms; indeed, Magic itself – as often in John W Campbell's magazine Unknown – can be treated like this. But we have entered the borderlands, where nothing can be finally and entirely clear. A particularly common feature of fantasy (for instance) is Time Travel accomplished by fantastic means, as in several tales by the significant children's author E Nesbit; we do not regard such books as sf, although many are of sf interest. At the same time we do regard Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), in which Time Travel is also accomplished by fantastic means, as an important sf text. We do not (for instance) give entries to such exemplary writers of horror fiction as Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, or Thomas Ligotti, even though we are aware that an occasional sf trope makes its way into their pages; we do give entries to Charles L Grant, James Herbert and Whitley Strieber, though primarily for their Post-Holocaust novels. Many popular fantasy writers, like Craig Shaw Gardner [now included] and Robert Jordan, have been left out; while others, like David A Gemmell and Barbara Hambly, have entries because we judge their work to be sufficiently akin to sf. When we have erred in making these decisions, we hope that we have done so on the side of inclusiveness.

In our treatment of authors (most of them dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) who specialized in subgenres associated with the development of genre sf (but not usefully defined as being themselves early sf), we do not pretend to be comprehensive. We do not attempt to provide entries for all authors of Lost-World novels, Fantastic Voyages, prehistoric romances, Future-War tales, occultist stories set on this or other worlds, stories of possession and split personality, tales of Reincarnation and Immortality, contes philosophiques and Utopias, especially utopias set in the present day. But the last decades have seen an enormous increase in the field's understanding of the intersecting genres that helped shape modern sf, and we now have a much better idea of the amount and variety of early sf and its siblings. We have therefore very considerably increased our author coverage in these areas.

In our treatment of authors (most of them writing after World War Two) who make occasional use of sf devices to propel plots set in an undated near future, we have been highly selective, for most of these books are neither written nor read as sf, and do not reward any attempt to incorporate them as sf or sf-ish, though we have given entries to a few (e.g., Ian Fleming). With political thrillers or satires set in an undated Near Future, we have erred on the side of inclusiveness (Allen Drury, for instance, is given an entry), and do so out of a genuine insecurity as to the sf nature of some political thought.

We regret that several factors have persuaded us to drop a feature from the first book edition that we know some found useful: there, we listed all separate, uncollected short stories (when we could locate them) that belonged to a series, as well as all the books in the series. We still list all series books, but we no longer, normally, append uncollected short stories. The main factor is utility: it is now very uncommon for readers to have ready access to the sort of magazine collections that would allow them to find these stories; the shift away from magazine publication towards book publication of recent work – as well as the extensive republication of worthwhile early work in book form – also argues against the inclusion of this feature.

So far we have been speaking only about fiction writers. We have been moderately generous, but not comprehensive, in giving entries to editors of sf magazines and sf anthologies (and few editors of only one or two anthologies have been included). More often than not, of course, the issue of inclusion or exclusion does not arise on this score, because many – perhaps most – sf editors have also been sf writers.

For critics and scholars and other authors of relevant nonfiction, we have been highly selective. We divide nonfiction authors into two categories:

  1. Authors about sf. The number of books, pamphlets, chapbooks and so on published about the field is now very large, and authors of only one book about sf may not receive an entry. Nonetheless, the number of "academic" and "bibliography" entries is considerable.
  2. Authors whose ideas have fed so strongly into sf (for good or ill) that we thought a summary of their work would be useful to readers. They run all the way from Plato to Erich von Däniken, taking in Immanuel Velikovsky and others en route. We are not at all inclusive about this category. Many writers have been left out, with no imputation intended as to their stature. If the scientist Stephen W Hawking does not appear while the scientist Freeman J Dyson does, it is because the latter has given his surname to a concept used widely in modern sf.

Author entries were written mostly by John Clute, some in collaboration; Peter Nicholls wrote more than a tenth of them, and Brian Stableford also contributed many major entries. Neither Malcolm Edwards nor David Pringle had time to rework their numerous 1979 entries (although the latter was able to revise his J G Ballard entry), and these have been updated by Clute and Stableford. John Eggeling was able to do some revision work on his entries. E F Bleiler and Neal Tringham each supplied several new entries. Other contributors of one or more author entries to this work are listed under Checklist of Contributors.

2. Themes

The theme entries are the connective tissue of this encyclopedia and constitute a quarter of its length. Through them it is possible to derive a coherent sense of the history of sf (itself a theme entry) and of what sf is all about. We are aware, too, of the usefulness of theme entries to teachers and academics, who may wish to use sf stories to throw light on contemporary issues but be at a loss to know which stories or novels would best be chosen for the task. Together, the theme entries form a very detailed lexicon of sf's main concerns, its subgenres, the genres to which it is most closely related, and the terms we use in talking about it. Entries range from Antimatter and Atlantis through Conceptual Breakthrough, Dystopias and Futures Studies, via Near Future and Origin of Man to Venus, Under the Sea and Weapons.

The theme entries were a major feature in the first book edition, and loom even larger in the second book edition and here. There is no clear distinction between a theme entry and a terminology entry (see below), but the theme entry is likely to be substantially longer (most over 1000 words, and some over 3000) and to give more examples from actual sf texts. However, many common items of sf terminology (Androids, Robots, Cryonics, Matter Transmitters, Terraforming and so on) are so important that they warrant a full theme entry.

Since the first edition we have upgraded some terminology entries to full theme entries, and reclassified some shorter theme entries as terminology entries. The upshot is that there is a total of 212 theme entries in all. Some new entries relate to recent developments in sf: Big Dumb Objects, Cyberpunk, GAMES AND TOYS (split in the third edition into Games and Toys), Game-Worlds, Graphic Novels, Nanotechnology, Shared Worlds, Survivalist Fiction, Virtual Reality and so on; others could well have appeared in the first edition had we thought of them: Apes as Human, Awards, Balloons, Club Stories, Golem, Hitler Wins, Hollow Earth, Libertarian SF, Monster Movies, Poetry, Ruritania, Sense of Wonder, Sleeper Awakes, Small Presses and Limited Editions, Space Habitats and Superheroes are some of these. Some relate to genre criticism: Edisonade, Horror in SF, Planetary Romance, Pocket Universe, Postmodernism and SF, Recursive SF and Technothriller are the main ones.

Brian Stableford has written 78 theme entries, this being where he has left his profoundest mark on the work, and revised others; Peter Nicholls has written 71; John Clute has written 14. Other theme entry authors include Brian W Aldiss, Everett Bleiler, Damien Broderick, Professor I F Clarke, Robert Frazier, Neil Gaiman, David Pringle, Tom Shippey, and John Sladek.

3. Terminology

A terminology entry is effectively a short theme entry. This edition contains 65 terminology entries. Most are terms often used in sf, but sometimes found obscure by new readers, like AI, BEM, Corpsicle, Gas Giant, Ion Drive, Lagrange Point, Parsec, Rimworld and Telekinesis. Some are terms used in describing sf and associated genres, like Braid, Heroic Fantasy, Magic Realism, Oulipo, Robinsonade, Scientifiction, Sci Fi, Semiprozine, Sharecrop, Slipstream SF, Speculative Fiction, Splatter Movies and Tie. There are also entries on certain movements allegedly connected to sf, such as General Semantics and Scientology. For a full list of terminology entries see Terminology. Most terminology entries are by Peter Nicholls, some are by John Clute.

4. Science Fiction in Various Countries

It would be redundant to give separate entries for the USA and the UK, since sf from these areas dominates the encyclopedia. We do, however, give entries to three other English-speaking countries, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The entry for Canada is divided into two sections: one for English-speaking Canada and one for French-speaking Canada.

This area of the encyclopedia is, relatively, the most expanded from the first edition, and was perhaps the most difficult to put together. Communications difficulties with parts of the world in considerable turmoil have left some entries with an occasional date or translation of title missing. We retain entries for Benelux and Scandinavia (with Denmark and Finland now separate entries), but two other portmanteau entries from the first edition have been broken up, to a degree, into their component nations. There are no longer entries for "Eastern Europe" and "Spain, Portugal and South America" but, as the list below shows, some new portmanteau entries are now included. It should be noted that the Yugoslavia entry was sent to us in December 1990 before that nation began to split into a group of smaller states with a Serbian rump still calling itself Yugoslavia. We decided for ease of reference not even to attempt to divide the Yugoslavia entry into its component nation-states of Croatia, Slovenia, etc.

The full list of entries is as follows (new entries asterisked): Albania*, Arabic SF*, Australia, Austria*, Benelux (Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands), Black African SF* (since deleted as badly in need of updates which were not forthcoming), Bulgaria*, Canada, China*, Czech and Slovak SF*, Denmark*, Finland*, France, Germany, Hungary*, Israel*, Italy, Japan, Latin America* (primarily Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico), New Zealand*, Poland*, Romania*, Russia, Scandinavia (used in the second edition as a catchall for, principally, Sweden and Norway), Soviet Union* (more a note than an entry), Spain* and Yugoslavia*. All but a handful of these have been written by experts from the areas or nations concerned. We have not attempted to contact scholars from every country. We apologize to Greece, India and all the many other countries where we know some sf exists, but where we did not have the necessary contacts to enable us to codify it. What was approximately 14,000 words in 1979 has been expanded to around 40,000, close to three times the length. The Anglo-American readership must be our first concern; they make up the vast majority of our audience. But we feel that, while we might not have done full justice to sf in non-English-speaking countries, then at least we have outlined, on a scale not previously attempted in an English-language sf reference work, the extraordinary scope of what has now become a truly international literature.

All authors – about 300 of them – who receive substantive treatment in the Country entries are cross-referred to there from the rest of the encyclopedia. On the other hand, when a Country entry mentions authors who are well known in English translation and therefore have their own entries, their names are given in CAPITALS, referring readers to those entries, with generally only a brief coverage in the Country entry. Under France, therefore, there is not much about Jules Verne, and in Russia not much about the Strugatski brothers.

5. Films

Our coverage of films is thorough but not fully comprehensive. Depending on where you draw the boundaries, there may have been 2000 sf films made. There are now around 580 film entries. Sf/fantasy/horror film-making, as readers will know, has become almost the dominant genre in the industry since at least the time of the first Star Wars film.

Dates of films are difficult to establish with certainty. Most written sources give the copyright date, some the date of first release (often a year later), and some appear simply to guess. An examination of the film itself will give only the copyright date, and we have where possible given date of first release, but there are a number of cases, especially with older films, where we cannot be certain of the category into which the date falls.

We have included representative films from the fringes of sf, such as near-future thrillers about, for example, a presidential assassination or a technological breakthrough. By far the most important of the fringe subgenres is the rationalized horror film or monster movie (there are many in this encyclopedia) where the monster is provided with a scientific explanation, and, more importantly (as in the case of George A Romero's zombie films), where the apparently supernatural threat is regarded with a science-fictional eye. (Can you train zombies? Do they have a society? What will their presence do to existing society?)

We count made-for-tv films as film entries rather than television entries, in part because many US films made for television have been given theatrical release abroad. Also (like ordinary theatrical movies) many are available on videotape, and not distinguished in the video shop from ordinary movies. There may be some apparent inconsistencies here, because we count television miniseries as television series rather than films, even though versions of miniseries – The Stand, for example – sometimes turn up on videotape or on television as if they were single films. Made-for-tv films are identified as such throughout. Because their standard is on average lower than that of theatrical films, we do not attempt in this area the same level of comprehensiveness.

A word about omissions: most (but not all) sf films exclusively for children are out, hence few Disney films; most foreign-language films with little or no circulation outside their country of origin are out (though many foreign-language films remain in); most superhero films are out (e.g., Spiderman, Batman) unless there is a strong sf rationale (e.g., Darkman); horror movies and monster movies that effectively rely on the supernatural are out (e.g., Wolfen, Nightwing, Gremlins); Time Travel accomplished by fantastic means is usually out (e.g., Biggles, The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, Peggy Sue Got Married, Somewhere in Time, Time Bandits); apart from the great originals, films about monsters made from body parts are out, especially if joky (e.g., most post-war films in the Frankenstein series, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant); most Bigfoot films are out (e.g., Legend of Boggy Creek); most ESP thrillers are out (e.g., Eyes of Laura Mars, The Medusa Touch); many future-gladiator, post Mad Max films are out (e.g., The New Barbarians, Steel Dawn, Turkey Shoot, The Salute of the Jugger [vt The Blood of Heroes]); many limp parodies are out (e.g., Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Class of Nuke 'Em High); many mediocre sequels and remakes are out, or more probably, mentioned in passing (e.g., Critters 2, The Stepford Children). We hope we have given separate entries to all the better sequels and remakes.

Readers of sf in the written form, for whom this work is primarily designed, may justifiably feel that films are given undue prominence. After all, we do not discuss individual novels in anything like the same detail given to individual films. On the other hand, the audience for sf cinema is massively greater than that for sf books, and in the light of the huge popular interest in sf films it seemed a thorough coverage was necessary, especially since we enjoy them ourselves. All the same, sf-cinema entries, including those on film-makers, constitute less than 10% of the entire text, though at 110,000 words this makes the film section of this work one of the most comprehensive studies available.

All the original 1979 entries (John Brosnan was then the primary contributor in this area) have been thoroughly revised and in many cases wholly rewritten. New film entries are mostly by Peter Nicholls, quite a few by Kim Newman, some by other hands.

Theme entries about films are Cinema, Horror in SF (in part), Monster Movies, Splatter Movies and Superheroes (in part), all by Peter Nicholls. Relevant magazine entries are Cinefantastique, Starburst and Starlog.

6. Film-makers

There were 19 film-maker entries in the first book edition, or more if one counts such entries as those on Charles Beaumont, Michael Crichton and Richard Matheson (and in this edition Alan Brennert and Glen A Larson) who would have received entries in any case on the basis of their sf work in written form. There are now 34 film-maker entries in all, many written by Kim Newman. The film-maker entries (including some whose work was primarily in television) are Irwin Allen, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, Jack Arnold, John Badham, Charles Band, James Cameron, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Roger Corman, David Cronenberg, Joe Dante, John Frankenheimer, Ray Harryhausen, Byron Haskin, Gale Anne Hurd, Nigel Kneale, Fritz Lang, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Georges Méliès, George Miller, Terry Nation, Willis O'Brien, George Pal, Gene Roddenberry, George A Romero, John Sayles, Ridley Scott, Rod Serling, Curt Siodmak, Steven Spielberg, Andrei Tarkovsky, Peter Watkins and Robert Wise.

7. Television

As with films, we are thorough without being fully comprehensive. There are about 110 television entries in all. Most of these entries are for television series, some for television miniseries and serials. (Made-for-tv movies we classify as films, as noted above.) We do not include animated television series for children, such as The Jetsons, with the exception (by popular demand) of the various animated puppet series, like Stingray, made by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. A fringe area, where we have made decisions which will certainly be seen by some as arbitrary, concerns television series centring on a Superhero whose powers (generally) stem from some sort of scientific disaster. Thus we do have an entry for The Incredible Hulk, but no entry for The Flash, which we see as a crime show rather than sf. We have been rather niggardly about including serials and miniseries, concentrating primarily on those, like the four Quatermass stories and (much more recently) The Cloning of Joanna May, that have aroused much general interest or are of obviously high quality. We do tend to give entries in cases where there was a film spin-off, or a film of the same title, so as to clear up possible confusion, as with The Trollenberg Terror and The Day of the Triffids. We believe there are no omissions at all of live-action television series for adults in the English language up to 1991 that lasted any length of time and are inarguably sf in content. We also give entries for famous fantasy series with occasional sf content, such as The Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories. Television entries for this CD-ROM edition have mostly been written by Peter Nicholls, some by Kim Newman; many surviving from the first book edition are by John Brosnan.

8. Magazines

We give entries to the most important pulp and other general-fiction magazines that printed sf before the advent of genre-sf magazines in 1926, such as The Argosy and The Strand Magazine; these are listed under Magazines or Pulp. We include a number of the Superhero and Supervillain pulps of the 1930s, like Captain Hazzard and Dr Yen Sin; these, too, will be found listed under Pulp. We count in the catch-all magazine category (as opposed to the specialized Fanzine category) maybe ten critical journals about sf, some wholly academic, like Science Fiction Studies, and some less so, like Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review. We also include the most important sf-movie magazines: Cinefantastique, Starburst and Starlog.

But the centrepiece of our magazine entries comprises the fiction magazines, whether fully professional or Semiprozines. We attempt to give entries to all professional sf magazines and semiprozines in the English language, past and current, but will not tempt fate by claiming 100% success in this surprisingly difficult exercise; in the first book edition we claimed (slightly incorrectly) to give entries also to "all fantasy magazines that regularly printed stories by sf authors", but we do not repeat that claim here: the borderland between fantasy magazine and sf magazine is grey; and while we hope to have given entries to all fantasy magazines that extend clearly if occasionally into the sf area, and to some like Unknown that rarely did but nevertheless featured largely in the ethos of the sf community, we have eliminated some entries, like Coven 13, Mind Magic and Fantasy Tales, where the distance from sf magazines proper seems too large. On the other hand, we have resuscitated some candidates not given entries first time around, like magazines of horror, which have a genuine sf relevance, and generally we still include a great many magazines, like Bizarre! Mystery Magazine, that were or are fantasy magazines primarily. The line has to be arbitrary, and we do not claim omniscience at generic diagnosis.

All magazines can be regarded as anthologies, and the distinction between the two is not nearly as clear as might be thought. In cases where original-anthology series announce themselves as periodicals by being numbered and dated (especially on the cover), and especially when they contain magazine features like letter columns, editorials and so on, they can be regarded as magazines, even if they physically resemble paperback or even hardcover books. Some announce themselves as such, Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine being one. Further borderline examples are Avon Fantasy Reader (regarded by the fans of the time as a magazine, and so indexed in the standard magazine references by Donald B Day and Erwin S Strauss), Destinies, Far Frontiers and New Destinies – there are others. The main practical result of this policy is that we do not necessarily separately list every title in such series as we would have done if we regarded them as original-anthology series proper.

There is a total of about 240 fiction-magazine and critical-journal entries. Some of these single entries cover two magazines with identical titles, so about 250 magazines are given entries. We do not generally give entries to foreign-language magazines, though a good many of these are cross-referred to the relevant Country entry. Most magazine entries were written by Brian Stableford, Peter Nicholls, Frank Parnell, Greg Feeley and Malcolm Edwards. It is no longer the case that our encyclopedia gives the most comprehensive magazine coverage (see the reference book by Marshall Tymn and Mike Ashley), but it is certainly the most comprehensive in a work not exclusively devoted to the topic.

9. Fanzines

There are 36 entries devoted to individual fanzines, this branch of amateur publishing being of central importance to the history of the sf community. (Data on an additional dozen or so titles are available by following up cross-references, title changes being common in fanzine publishing.) However, we have been highly selective, concentrating on fanzines that have generally been quite long-running and which have as part of their content some serious comment on sf, as opposed to general news or gossip. There is a very thin line between fanzines and critical journals on the one hand, and fanzines and semiprozines on the other, so our count of 36 might be higher or lower than another's. Most of these entries were written by Peter Roberts (first edition), Rob Hansen and Peter Nicholls.

10. Comics

Comic books and comic strips are taken more seriously by many more people now than was the case a decade ago, partly as a result of artistic developments in the field. We have reflected this widespread interest by expanding the size and number of entries dealing with both historical and contemporary sf comics. The two main theme entries dealing with comics are Comics and Graphic Novels; a third entry, Superheroes, deals primarily with comics, films and tv. We have entries on three comic-book publishers, DC Comics, EC Comics and Marvel Comics. The entries on comics titles and comics characters are Alley Oop, American Flagg!, Barbarella, Brick Bradford, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Captain Marvel, Connie, Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future, Flash Gordon, Garth, Heavy Metal, Jeff Hawke, Judge Dredd, Legion of Super-Heroes, Love and Rockets, Métal Hurlant, Mister X, Nexus, Superman, Swamp Thing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 2000 AD, Watchmen and X-Men. Entries on writers and illustrators primarily associated with comics are Neal Adams, Enki Bilal, Vaughn Bodē, Brian Bolland, Chester Brown, Charles Burns, Dick Calkins, Howard V Chaykin, Chris Claremont, Richard Corben, Philippe Druillet, Dave Gibbons, Jean Giraud (also known as Moebius), Frank Hampson, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Winsor McCay, Dave McKean, Lorenzo Mattotti, Frank Miller, Gray Morrow, Alan Moore, Katsuhiro Ōtomo, Alex Raymond, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Sim, James Steranko, Osamu Tezuka and Wally Wood. That makes 59 strongly comics-oriented entries. There are of course many further entries on artists we think of primarily as sf book and magazine illustrators, but who also worked in comics, such as Frank Frazetta. Many entries on writers and editors include discussion of their work in comics. These would include Alfred Bester, Eando Binder, James Cawthorn, Gerard F Conway, Gardner F Fox, Neil Gaiman, H L Gold, Ron Goulart, Edmond Hamilton, Harry Harrison, Michael Moorcock, Philip Francis Nowlan, Julius Schwartz, Mort Weisinger, Manly Wade Wellman.

The majority of comics entries were written by Ron Tiner and Steve Whitaker; but nine other contributors have also written some.

11. Illustrators

We only rarely include entries for "gallery" artists like John Martin whose work occasionally (with hindsight) included sf themes: the End of the World in Martin's case. We restrict ourselves to GENRE-SF artists whose sf illustrative work is most closely associated with magazines and books, though some have also worked in films, record covers or calendars. There is some cross-over between the SF-Illustrators category and the Comics category; several artists listed above under Comics, like Gray Morrow and Wally Wood, worked also for the sf magazines. There are 65 entries in this category, aside from artists listed under Comics and occasional artists (e.g., Fred T Jane, Keith Roberts) who would have appeared in this volume anyway for their fiction.

Most illustrator entries were written by Jon Gustafson, the majority in collaboration with Peter Nicholls.

The 64 SF-Illustrators entries are George Barr, Wayne Barlowe, Earle K Bergey, Hannes Bok, Chesley Bonestell, Howard V Brown, Margaret Brundage, Jim Burns, Thomas Canty, Edd Cartier, David A Cherry, Mal Dean, Roger Dean, Vincent Di Fate, Diane and Leo Dillon, Elliott Dold, Bob Eggleton, Ed Emshwiller, Stephen E Fabian, Virgil Finlay, Christopher Foss, Frank Frazetta, Frank Kelly Freas, Robert Fuqua, Jack Gaughan, H R Giger, Richard Glyn Jones, James Gurney, David Hardy, Eddie Jones, Josh Kirby, Roy G Krenkel, Paul Lehr, Brian Lewis, A Leydenfrost, Angus McKie, Don Maitz, Rodney Matthews, Ian Miller, Leo Morey, Rowena Morrill, Paul Orban, Frank R Paul, Bruce Pennington, Richard M Powers, Gerard A Quinn, Tony Roberts, Albert Robida, Hubert Rogers, Rod Ruth, J Allen St John, Charles Schneeman Jr, John Schoenherr, Alex Schomburg, Barclay Shaw, Rick Sternbach, Lawrence Sterne Stevens, Darrell Sweet, Karel Thole, Ed Valigursky, Boris Vallejo, van Dongen, H W Wesso, Michael Whelan, Tim White.

12. Book Publishers

We have expanded our coverage of mass-market and general publishers with strong sf lines, while continuing our coverage of specialist sf publishers. The result, if these are read together with the publishing and small presses and limited editions theme entries, is a history (not comprehensive) of post-war publishing of sf books and also books about sf. Publisher entries are Ace Books, Advent: Publishers, Arkham House, Arno Press, Badger Books, Ballantine Books, Bantam Books, Bluejay Books, Borgo Press, Curtis Warren, DAW Books, Del Rey Books, Doubleday, Essex House, Fantasy Press, Fantasy Publishing Company Inc, FAX Collector's Editions, Garland, Gnome Press, Gollancz, Greenwood Press, Gregg Press, Hadley Publishing Company, Hyperion Press, Laser Books, Mirage Press, Prime Press, Robert Hale Limited, Science Fiction Book Club, Shasta Publishers, Starmont House, Timescape, Tor Books, Underwood-Miller and Mark V Ziesing. There are 35 entries in this selective list.

13. Original Anthologies

The most important location, after the magazines, of sf short fiction – sf being one of the few forms of fiction where the short story and the novella are still very much alive – is in original anthologies (anthologies of stories not previously published). There are some hundreds of these, far too many to list individually. We do, however, give entries to English-language original-anthology series devoted to genre-sf stories, provided that the series contains three or more books. One or two such series may have slipped our net, but we believe we have caught most of them. We do not, however, give entries to shared-world original-anthology series, though we make an exception for Wild Cards and some more are listed under Games Workshop. When an original-anthology series like Destinies or Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine describes itself as a magazine, even though it is in book form, then we list it under Magazines. The Original-Anthology entries were mostly written by Malcolm Edwards (first edition) and Peter Nicholls (subsequent editions).

14. Awards

There will always be argument as to the significance (if any) of sf awards, but it is obviously necessary to give the most important, and to list all their winners. The general question of awards is discussed under Awards, which also lists the major awards, notably the Hugo and the Nebula, that receive their own entries.

15. Miscellaneous

There remains a residue of bits and pieces, mostly about sf organizations (Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, Science Fiction Foundation, Science Fiction Research Association, World SF and others), sf fandom (APA, Conventions, Fandom, Fan Language, Fanzine, Futurians and others), sf Collections (four of these), different publishing formats (Bedsheet, Digest, etc.), and even a couple on characters like Captain Justice. There are 30 miscellaneous entries, some of the fannish ones originally by Peter Roberts and revised by Rob Hansen, most of the rest by Nicholls.

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