Search SFE    Search EoF

  Omit cross-reference entries  

News item dated 5 March 2022

Our relentless addition of new cover scans to the Picture Gallery (chiefly masterminded by Roger Robinson) has taken the count past 30,000. The thirty thousandth, commemorating an important researcher and bibliographer of Lost Race tales, is Stuart Teitler’s 35 Books from the Stuart Teitler Collection of Lost-Race Fictions (2003).

Other looming SFE landmarks include an entry count of 19,000 and a total word count of 6.5 million, neither as exciting as the rather more distant twenty thousand and seven million. Also in March 2022, the online text has doubled in size from roughly 3.2 million words (October 2011 launch) to 6.4 million words.

Speaking of big numbers, the question of whether there could ever be a print edition of the online SF Encyclopedia has once again been raised. A quick calculation based on David Langford’s experience with print-on-demand publishing suggests that the current SFE would run to eighteen volumes of 800 pages. And would of course be out of date before the first copies arrived from the printer. Traditional book publication for a reference of this size is, alas, no longer feasible – as the publishers of the Encyclopedia Britannica decided in 2012.



x
This website uses cookies.  More information here. Accept Cookies