From Library Journal
This spring, two useful reference/sourcebooks are appearing that should delight sf and fantasy aficionados. New York teacher Krulik has compiled a wonderfully detailed encyclopedic guide to Roger Zelazny's Amber universe, a ten-volume fantasy series. Prepared with the cooperation of the author, who died in 1995, this sourcebook covers characters, themes, settings, and situations in an A-to-Z format that will help readers new to the series navigate through any volume. Essential for libraries with the Amber books. St. James offers an A-to-Z compendium of major fantasy writers. Each entry consists of a brief biography, a complete list of published works, a signed critical essay, and comments from some living authors on their work. The work is comprehensive, with decent two- to three-paragraph treatments and useful title and nationality indexes. A second volume covering horror, ghost, and Gothic writers is due out soon. An essential reference purchase for libraries with fantasy collections.?Susan Hamburger, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., University Park
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Covering 400 writers identified with the fantasy genre, this is the first volume in an anticipated two-volume set. Volume 2 will cover writers in the horror and gothic field.
The vast majority of writers here are from English-speaking countries, but 11 foreign writers such as Hans Christian Andersen are included in a separate section. Entries are in alphabetical order with brief biographical information, a bibliography of works in fantasy and other genres, and a critical signed essay about the writer. For example, the entry on Mark Helprin has brief facts on his life and a list of his fantasy works, short stories, and other publications. The critical article by Paul Di Filippo is a page in length. The guide ends with an extensive reading list on fantasy literature, a nationality index, and a title index, which includes novels and short stories listed as fantasy as well as series and series characters.
The line between fantasy, science fiction, and horror is very thin. More than 100 of the authors in this book are also included in St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers (4th ed., 1996). The essays in each volume are different, but the works lists are essentially the same, although arranged differently to focus on either fantasy or science fiction. Several people one might expect to find in the fantasy volume, such as Anne McCaffrey and Jack Chalker, are only in the science fiction volume. More than 50 of the fantasy writers are also found in Scribner's Supernatural Fiction Writers (1985). Many of the authors can be found in Contemporary Authors and similar reference works, but the difference can be seen by focusing on Mark Twain's entry. The essay on Twain by Gary Westfahl shows that Twain fits comfortably in fantasy and questions those who class some of his works, such as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, as early science fiction.
St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers will be useful both for research on fantasy writers as well as for the casual reader who is curious about an author. It will be an asset to any library that needs additional information on this genre.
