Review by Booklist Review
Designed to "provide the librarian, researcher, and fan with a path through the labyrinthine maze of amateur and professional reference materials in the related fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror," this volume updates one published in 1992. The book is divided into 32 sections (up from 29 in the first edition), including "Encyclopedias and Dictionaries," "Magazine and Anthology Indexes," "Subject Bibliographies," "Character Dictionaries and Author Cyclopedias," and "Film and Television Catalogs." Each section begins with a scope note explaining what is included and why. Complete bibliographic citations are followed by literate and readable annotations that vary from a brief note to three or four lengthy paragraphs. The annotations consist of description and succinct analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each item. As the authors point out in their introduction, 150 of the 705 entries are new to this edition, and many more have been revised. One of the new sections, "Major On-Line Resources," is a particularly valuable examination of 20 Web sites, ranging from Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database ("Five stars for this extraordinarily useful site") to the Ultimate Science Fiction Web Site ("This hodge-podge site has clearly grown way beyond the control of its manager"). The final section, "Core Collections," lists titles that would be appropriate for the reference collections of academic, public, and personal libraries. The ambitious institutional collections are subdivided by size and type of library--for example, there are different lists for large city systems, medium-sized county and city libraries, and small public and county libraries (which would work for high-school libraries, too). Separate author, title, and subject indexes complete the work. RBB called the first edition of Reference Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror "one of the best and most complete works to be published on the three popular genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror," and this is no less true of the second. Because the three genres that are covered have only increased in popularity, most public and academic libraries will want this title on their shelves. Libraries that bought the first edition will certainly want to update.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
