Great Science-Fiction
& Fantasy Works

science-fiction & fantasy literature:
a critical list with discussions

How the "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy" Site is Organized

"Others, going about it in the opposite way, thought the first thing to do was eliminate all worthless books."

--The Library of Babel,
Jorge Luis Borges

Site Overview

As the Welcome page states, this site is at bottom simply a list of good science-fiction and fantasy authors and of good books by those authors, along with all sorts of possibly useful or entertaining subset lists. But it has grown in the making, and includes a lot I never originally contemplated. Having by now a page count in the five digits, the site wants a little introductory explaining, so you can better hunt up what you may find of interest here.

I will, for convenience, here repeat the overview you should already have read on that Welcome page.

We can, if crudely, compare this site with a solar system:

• the centrum, the "sun" of this site, which has spawned the rest and about which that rest revolves, is a master list of science-fiction and fantasy authors of quality, and their notable works;

• the "planets" of this solar system are author pages, one per author, that each carry the book list for that author as given in the master list, but also carry (or will all in time carry) an essay about that author with some comments on the listed books by that author, as well as links to useful further resources about that author available elsewhere on line;

• orbiting each such auctorial "planet" as "moons" are individual book pages, one page per listed book by the corresponding author; those pages do not further discuss the books they represent (though they may point out preferred editions) but are about availability of the book--each edition currently available new (if any) is listed, with publication and price data in several currencies, plus there is (whether the book is currently available new or not) always a link to an Abebooks listing of all used copies of the book currently available on the internet;

• the solar-system analogy now gets a bit strained, for those book-page "moons" often themselves have "moonlets" orbiting them, which moonlets are individual edition pages : one page for each particular edition of that book still available new from a given Amazon national division--and, while each such edition-at-division "moonlet" page carries up-to-the-minute price and availability information, it also has, whenever they are available, all editorial and reader reviews of the book appearing on Amazon);

• and there is an "asteroid belt" of miscellaneous pages more or less directly related to science fiction and fantasy literature, plus a few "comets"--pages more peripherally related, but still circling the same conceptual sun as the rest.

Site Detail

There is a pretty complete "Site Directory", which I have tried to organize logically and have tarted up with colors, at the bottom of this and every major page of this site.

(The incompleteness of the Directory is that it does not individually list all the many "planets", the per-author pages--though it does of course include the pages from which you can easily get at them: the full master list, and the 26 pieced-off alpahabetic sections of it--nor does it individually list any of the per-title "moons" or "moonlets"; you would normally go to a book "moon" from the corresponding auctorial "planet", and to an edition "moonlet" from the corresponding per-book "moon", though there is a complete book-titles list page for the stubborn).

But, even though the Directory is thus abbreviated, and color-coded and annotated, at a first glance it can appear daunting, so I'll go through it section by section for you.

Let me note in passing that in trying to keep the site arrangement coherent I have adopted the practice of using page border colors that are common to pages with something in common, and that roughly correspond (they are somewhat darker) to the colors used in the Directory display--for example, this page has a blue border. (Not all pages have yet been converted to this scheme, but I am busily working away at conversions.)

The Introductory Pages

These comprise introductory material that you normally need to read only once (though you may want to come back to it some time, especially this page.) This part of the Site Directory block looks so:

Of these, you should by now have already read both the Welcome, with its notes on basic mechanical matters, and both halves of the Apologia, which explains who and what is here and why they are and others are not. As I said on the Welcome page, this site was designed for civilized readers, not for the MTV generation: if you want to skip over the explanations, fine, but you do so at your peril. I do not take kindly to inquiry emails asking "but how can you leave out Robert Heinlein/Piers Anthony/Isaac Asimov/Terry Brooks/whoever?"--which sort I get regularly. (The other listed page, Site Organization, is of course the one you are on right now.)

The Author-Related Pages

These are the pages you will normally use as your targets. If you have a true fast internet connection, the Master List--the "sun" of this site--is the place to start; if your connection is a simple dial-up, the 26 alphabetical-by-author pages are your best bet. This part of the Site Directory block looks so:

This site is oriented toward authors. Although there are many authors of generally fine work who produce the occasional clunker, and many authors of indifferent or worse work who produce the odd gem, by and large it is by identifying writers of ability that we discover works of merit, and so this site is organized around the authors listed. The subheadings below tell you what's what with these author-related pages.

The Author List

The raw Author List is just that: a bare list, alphabetical, with some preliminary commentary (and my rough ratings, from one to five stars, which ought not to be, and likely will not be, taken too seriously). That page is chiefly meant as a quick summary list, just so you can see at a glance who is--so far--represented here and who not; it is not a page you are likely to want often.

The Master Authors/Books List

The real center of the site is this full Books-by-Author Master Authors/Books List, showing all books considered on this site, organized by author; but . . . that page is consequently quite large, over a quarter of a megabyte, and so--unless you have a true high-speed net connection--may take an annoyingly long time to fully load (up to a minute on a 28.8K connection). I thus also provide 26 other pages, each a subset of the full list--all authors whose names begin with a given letter--so those with slower connections can still get quickly to the lists. Those sub-list pages are, just as shown in the tabulation above:

The Individual Author Pages (not listed in the Directory table)

These, the "planets" to the Master List's "sun", are not shown individually in the Directory table owing to their number--you would normally access them from one of the inclusive pages--the Master List or some alpha section of it, as described just above.

Each individual-author page not only repeats that author's book list from the Master List (and alpha sub-list pages), but also contains--or will eventually contain, as I get to each--some discussion of that author and, in a general way, the listed books by that author (I say "a general way" because my purpose on those individual-author pages is to give you a sense for the author--a taste, one might say, not a detailed and scholarly analysis--and I take pains to not disclose information about any book that might short-circuit your enjoyment and discovery of it: in short, "no spoilers"). As I said, I do not, owing to the length of the list, link those individual pages in the Directory, but they are linked at pretty much every place on this site that particular authors' names are mentioned (such as on the raw Author List mentioned above).

Author-Related Specialty Lists

While the author pages just described are the kernel of this site, there is also what many may find of the most immediate interest on this site, a page with various specialty sub-lists of the authors; notably, it includes lists of the five-star and four-star authors, plus notable writers of limited output and a few other such things.

Author Links

For those who want to go on to find out more about any of these authors than my limited space or knowledge provides, I have provided a long page of Author Links to sites about these authors. For each author for whom I could find such a thing--and I have searched quite diligently--there is a site link (or, too often, a mere single-page link) provided: I usually give only one link because amassing a reasonably complete list would be silly, as the sites I link to themselves provide such lists, doubtless more complete and current than anything I could do (but I do give multiples when there is not even one good link). Indeed, I do not necessarily link to the "best" or "most complete" site about any author--only to the one that appeared to have the longest list of further links, to give you access to as much information as possible about that author.

(As I one by one flesh out the bare individual-author pages, I provide on each, under a heading Other Resources, links to all the useful-seeming sites I can locate about that author; I correspondingly change the link on the "Author Links" page to point to that section of the full author page. Little by little--by very little--all the solo links on the "Author Links" page will be displaced by such references.)

Sadly, for too many authors there is not only no entire dedicated site, but not even a decent whole page. I have thus also included on that page a list of authors lacking decent documentation on the web, in the hope that some fans may be inspired to start such sites.

More Books

Because I have not recently been able to give this site as much time as I would choose to, I have created a More Books page listing other books yet unread by me by authors already present in these lists, which books I cannot say with reasonable certainty will, on reading, end up here; that doesn't mean that they are "marginal" works, only that their authors are variable in the quality of their output--these lists very likely contain numerous gems. I have done this so that those who might occasionally drop in here looking for ideas on expanding their reading range may find some fresh material without having to wait on my slow reading pace.

Other Candidates

Just as there are likely more wonderful books by the authors in these lists than are listed here (as explained just above), there is assuredly some number of comparably fine authors not listed here at all yet (owing, again, to my being one mortal human). As with the list page described above, I want to give those who might occasionally drop in here looking for ideas on expanding their reading range some fresh material without their having to wait on my slow reading pace. I thus, after diligent research into the opinions of folk whose opinions are likely to be meaningful, prepared this list page of Other Candidates for these pages, including at least representative selections of titles by each.

I am working as best life allows at sampling works by these authors--as I type, I have about three dozen volumes on my library table by such yet-untested writers--and am trying to place them ahead of unread works by authors already on the lists. So many books, so little time . . . .

The Book-Related Pages

While the actual per-book pages, the "moons" of this literary solar system, are something you normally reach from author-related pages, there are various specialty lists of books that you may find of interest. For the directly book-related pages, the corresponding Site Directory block looks so:

General Book Lists

Although there is a single particular-books All Listed Books page, on which all titles recommended in this site's Master List are listed, it is just for reference, and is not in my opinion of much immediate use: you are best advised to discover titles as you encounter them in context here and there on this site. (Besides which that single title-list page is awfully big, and so makes a long download at dial-up speeds.)

There is also a page with an evolving list of Preferred Editions of books that have such versions (a seriously incomplete list that I am still expanding, roughly in parallel with the progress of detailed individual-author write-ups).

Besides the actual speculative-fiction books comprised in the main author and book lists here, there are a few others--by now, quite a few--cited here and there on this site, some closely related to this field (such as books of speculative-fiction criticism), some rather farther afield; if you have run across such a citation and want to see it again but forget just where you saw it, simply jump to the Other Books page shown in the "Books" block above--that whole lot of odds and ends is collected in one place.

Specialty Book Lists

While this site is by and large organized around authors, there are also some few pages with speciality lists of particular sorts of books:

• Overlooked Gems of speculative fiction (books of high merit now too-little known);

• Light-Hearted speculative-fiction books (not necessarily comic or twee, but certainly not terribly sober or solemn);

• Religiously Themed speculative-fiction books (involving real theology, not simply invented story backgrounds); and,

• Young Readers's books (from things to read to pre-schoolers up to "young adult" works).

The Mandatory "Top 100" List

Finally, as far as book-oriented pages go, I have--perhaps unwisely--yielded to the temptation to throw in a version of an apparently mandatory in criticism "100 Best Books" list, except that I have made it a "100 Greats" list, not a "100 Best" list (even my arrogance has limits), plus I have made it a list of "works", not "books"; that difference is material, because I have used a rather expansive definition of what constitutes a "work" for these purposes (as explained on that page).

The Book-Buy Pages

Because people who read about books often want to read the books themselves, I offer several convenient ways for you to locate new and used copies of the books mentioned on this site, or--for that matter--any book whatsoever. Here's how the directory of the pages about book-buying work. While there are literally many thousands of actual individual "buy" pages on this site--first one for every title (the "moons" in the solar-system analogy of this site's layout) and then one for every edition of each of those many titles (the "moonlets")--the pages listed in the Directory are just explanations of all those other pages, which you normally find and reach in the course of reading here about particular authors and books..

New Books and Amazon

Of the three Amazon-related pages, the first explains some things about buying new books from Amazon, and about my relations with them--all six national divisions of them--and how those relations do and don't affect you and this site. Then, for for each of those six Amazon divisions, I have provided (besides the direct, one-click links for all available editions of each of the individual books listed here), six unrestricted-search pages; while, as you see, there's only one search page listed in the Directory, it in fact functions as six different pages, depending on which Amazon national division you call it for (which you can easily change once you're at that search page). The six effective pages are:

• search Amazon U.S.A.
• search Amazon U.K.
• search Amazon Canada
• search Amazon Germany
• search Amazon France
• search Amazon Japan

This way, you can locate any book that each division may carry, not just books listed on this site. (Incidentally, those searches will always locate editions in English, regardless of the native language of any Division.)

Finally, because some now-scarce editions may only be available from a division other than your own, I have tried to help ease the complications of figuring international shipping costs with a set of tables (on which I spent many dreary hours) in the listed page on international book-buying considerations.

Used Books and Abebooks

Another book-buying information page explains some things about buying used books through this site and about the Advanced Book Exchange (Abebooks); that page also provides a free-form Abebooks search capability, so you can find and buy used copies of any books whatsoever--not just the ones listed on this site. If you don't already know, Abebooks is an "on-line storefront" for something over 13,000 individual used-book sellers around the world--many being small, mom'n'pop operations.

Though Abebooks is international, I have, for convenience, set its used-book search page up like the Amazon new-book search page: that is, it is actually six pages in one. (In fact, you can actually, by using simple settings available on that page, effectively turn it into many dozens of "national" pages--but, for simplicity, the initial set-ups are just the same six as correspond to Amazon's national divisions.) The start-point nationalities available on that used-book search page are thus:

• search Abebooks U.S.A.
• search Abebooks U.K.
• search Abebooks Canada
• search Abebooks Germany
• search Abebooks France
• search Abebooks Japan

Unlike the Amazon searches, though, these settings are for where you are, not where the booksellers are (though you can control that, too, from the pages).

The Science Fiction Book Club

Another page about book buying gives you some information about the Science-Fiction Book Club (which also handles a lot of fantasy, the name notwithstanding) and a link to the introductory-offer page of their site, where you can sign up on line. (I am myself a member of long standing.) Low prices and all, though, to my mind the Club's big draw are its unique editions, volumes printed for them alone, because those volumes are often tidy omnibuses of related books not elsewhere available in omnibus editions. All that and more is described more fully on that Club-related page here.

And Those Non-Directory-Listed Pages

For all of that, the most important pages on this site related to book buying remain those individual book pages, one per title (and per alternate "aka" title); clicking on that link will open a new tab or window on your browser where you can see and have explained all the details of those pages (or you can wait and later read the new books page in full). The used-book results are especially important in the light of the sad circumstance that the majority of books recommended here are no longer in print, which says something about this world of ours.

(There are several books with edition pages on this site which books are not speculative fiction--some are speculative-fiction criticism or history, others are English-language-related books--and that are hence not on the "master" book list; those edition pages are reached either from in context on the particular site pages here on which you find them mentioned and linked, or from The Other Books list page described a bit above.)

The "Miscellaneous" Pages

As the TV ads often say: "But wait! There's more!" In this case, quite a bit more--please do not, because these pages are tucked away under "miscellaneous", overlook them (my own experience is that "miscellaneous" is often the most interesting category on a web site). Continuing the solar-system analogy, these pages are the "asteroids" and "comets" of this site--and they are, like their celestial counterparts, both numerous and often quite interesting.

(often the most interesting part of any site)	Miscellaneous Topics & Info:
		Musings:  an ever-growing collection of, yes, musings
		Obiter Dicta:  collected miscellaneous
		"That Other Genre":  crime/mystery fiction
		Science-Fiction & Fantasy Art and Illustration:  online galleries of diverse works
		Other Sites:  sites that have noticed this one
		The English Language:  a few thoughts on its modern rape
		Scumware!  read this if nothing else whatever
		Change Log  what was done when
		Your Host:  a comically little about me
		Donate:  you can help support this site
		Comments:  some things said about this site by others

First of these is Musings, a collection of pensées on science fiction and fantasy that have occurred to me from time to time; some of them augment or expand topics already covered in the Apologia, while others explore independent topics. The collection will grow as time passes, so if you find any of interest, it's worth checking back occasionally to see if there's anything new here.

Next is one I call obiter dicta, a collection of other, more peripheral thoughts than the Musings that did not seem to fit well on any other site page. But on it--this miscellaneous of the miscellaneous--there are, for example, a list of some books listed here that you can download free; an explanation--for those who have insisted on skipping over the heavily recommended introductory material here--of why this or that "master" author is not listed here; a few premier general-reference speculative-fiction and general-literature web sites; and some other stuff.

Because, in my not inconsiderable experience, speculative-fiction aficionados are also often interested in crime/mystery fiction, there is a little page here on That Other Genre, describing some outstanding (and literate) series in that genre.

On the theory that sites that link to this one are likely above the average to be of some interest to visitors here (and because it is an internet courtesy to reciprocate linking), there is a page of Other Sites, being all the sites that link to this site that I can readily discover.

As an on-and-off heavy contributor to the alt.english.usage usenet group, I felt compelled to put in my two cents' worth of angry comments on the terrible degradation of the English Language over the last half-century or so, and its whys and wherefores.

Then, and critically important for everyone--read this one page if you read nothing further whatever on this site--is some information on the horrid and disgusting stuff called Scumware that you could have on your computer right now and not know about.

I have, of course, the traditional site Change Log listing all nontrivial changes made to this site.

And I have provided the also-traditional scant few words about Your Host on this site.

There is also a "beg" page, from which you can, if you are feeling particularly big-hearted, Donate toward the upkeep costs of this site (it's all handled through PayPal and is as safe as an internet transaction can be, which is usually a lot safer than ordinary transactions).

Finally, there is a page of kindly Comments that visitors here have put up on their pages or mailed to me--those from recognized authorities in the field, including some authors, are especially pleasing, but they're all delightful--there are few rewards to running a site like this, and these are they.

Other Things

Searching the "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy" Site

At the bottom of each page of this site, right above the Site Directory we have been looking at, is a little grey block containing two things, the chief of which is a Google-powered site-search box, which is self-explanatory.

In that same grey block is a "beg button", by clicking which you go to a page here explaining how you can make a simple, Paypal-safe donation toward the upkeep of this site. The (To whom? Why? How? Click here to find out.) link takes you to a page that explains donating more fully.

The block looks like this:

Site Mechanics: Search this site, or the whole web:   greatsfandf.com         Web        (the usual Google search rules apply)

Please consider making a (To whom? Why? How? Click here to find out.)

Making Contact With the "Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy" Webmaster

Right below each page's Site Directory is another little block, from which you can one-click email me (if your browser, as most do, supports that); which asserts my copyrights; and from which you can test my claim that that page is indeed compliant with W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium, the international HTML standards-setting body) HTML standards.

Please notice these few perhaps non-obvious things:

• you can click on the owl image to see a page listing all the diverse web sites that The Owlcroft Company (that's me) operates;

• you can click on the Pair networks logo to see a page with information on getting your site or sites hosted there--believe me, they're about the best (not the cheapest, though reasonable, but you never get what you don't pay for);

• you can click on the W3C logo to see the results of a real-time validation check of the HTML that codes this page; and,

• by clicking on the large button bar, you can download a free copy of the absolutely, positively wonderful Firefox browser, with the nifty, useful Google Toolbar pre-installed for you; if you're not using Firefox, you're not using the best--it's that simple.

That block looks like this:

Site Info: This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites.       Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend. We invite you to click on the Pair link (or their logo) for more information on getting your site or sites hosted on a first-class service. Comments? Criticisms? Questions? Please, e-mail me by clicking here. (Or, if you cannot email from your browser, send mail to webmaster@greatsfandf.com) All content copyright 1999 - 2006 The Owlcroft Company This web page is strictly compliant with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Protocol v1.0 (Transitional). Click on the logo below to test us! So if your browser experiences any difficulties with this page (or, really, even if it doesn't seem to), (It's free!)

Bookmarking This Site

If you would like to bookmark this site, I recommend that you click on the link below, which will just jump you to the full Site Directory immediately below, then bookmark that URL--so that when you open the site, you'll be at a Site Directory, with the rest of this page above it if you want to refresh your memory about its organization.

Jump down to the full Site Directory.

(And--in any event--from that Directory, you can now decide where on the site you want to go next.)

This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites.

Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend. We invite you to click on the Pair link (or their logo) for more information on getting your site or sites hosted on a first-class service.

Comments? Criticisms? Questions?

Please, e-mail me by clicking here.

(Or, if you cannot email from your browser, send mail to webmaster@greatsfandf.com)

All content copyright 1999 - 2008 The Owlcroft Company

This web page is strictly compliant with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Protocol v1.0 (Transitional).
Click on the logo below to test us!