Customer Reviews (1)

A fine introduction to the best of fantasy up to the early 1980s
The fantasy genre had just begun it's long climb to the high level of popularity it enjoys now when this book was published in 1982.I would date the real beginning of the ascension to 1977, when Terry Brooks and Stephen R. Donaldson published the first volumes of their lengthy (and still continuing, as of 2010) series, and when the first of the many posthumous volumes of Tolkien's Middle-Earth histories, THE SILMARILLION, was released and became a huge bestseller.Fantasy had arrived!And it's only gotten bigger in the decades since.

So what's the point of taking a look at this long out-of-print, out-of-date volume?Well, primarily, to remind the curious reader that fantasy literature already had a rich and varied history over the decades - even centuries - prior to the 1970s; and perhaps to offer a corrective to the notion that we live in the greatest era for the genre.So much of what we've seen in the past few decades has been Tolkien-derived "epic" quest-fantasy - some of it great, some of it not so great - there's been other stuff of course, but the blueprint provided by LOTR has been a powerful and I think limiting one.In earlier years, this wasn't the case, and the variety of authors and works surveyed here, even in the limited space this book provides, is instructive to those who think that fantasy is - or should be - just dwarves and trolls and Dark Lords and such.

The book is divided into several sections; there's a "Seven League Shelf" of the authors' favorite books, a brief history of the genre from William Morris to the date of publication, a listing of series, a breakdown of various representetive books into subgenres such as "There and Back Again" (someone from the "real" world entering faerie, and returning) and "Bambi's Children" (animal fantasies), and most importantly and most space-intensive, a guide to the principal authors in the field, who are given anywhere from a paragraph to a couple of pages for their lives and works and importance to the field to be discussed.Because there are no other reviews here, and not much info on this book to be found elsewhere, I beg your indulgence as I list all the authors discussed:

Lynn Abbey - Richard Adams - Joan Aiken - Lloyd Alexander - Hans Christian Anderson - Poul Anderson - Piers Anthony - Robert Asprin - J.M. Barrie - L. Frank Baum - Peter S. Beagle - Charles Beaumont - John Bellairs - Stephen Vincent Benét - Algernon Blackwood - James Blish - Robert Bloch - Hannes Bok - Jorge Luis Borges - Ray Bradbury - K.M. Briggs - Terry Brooks - Fredric Brown - Mildred Downy Broxon - John Brunner - James Branch Cabell - Moira Caldecott - Ramsey Campbell - John Dickson Carr - Lewis Carroll - Lin Carter - Robert W. Chambers - Joy Chant - Vera Chapman - B.J. Chute - Susan Cooper - Basil Copper - Juanita Coulson - Aleister Crowley - John Crowley - Avram Davidson - L. Sprague DeCamp - Samuel R. Delany - August Derleth - Graham Diamond - Peter Dickinson - Gordon R. Dickson - Stephen R. Donaldson - Lord Dunsany - Edward Eager - E.R. Eddison - Phyllis Eisenstein - Harlan Ellison - Charles G. Finney - Jack Finney - E.M. Forster - Gardner F. Fox - Paul Gallico - Alan Garner - Jane Gaskell - Elizabeth Goudge - Kenneth Grahame - Roland Green - H. Rider Haggard - Isidore Haiblum - Linda Haldeman - Neil Hancock - Paul Hazel - Robert A. Heinlein - William Hope Hodgson - E.T.A. Hoffmann - Robert E. Howard - Dahlov Ipcar - Eric Iverson - John Jakes - M.R. James - Tove Jansson - Diana Wynne Jones - Carol Kendall - Stephen King - Rudyard Kipling - Richard Kirk - Katherine Kurtz - Tanith Lee - Sheridan LeFanu - Ursula K. LeGuin - Friz Leiber - C.S. Lewis - David Lindsay - Hugh Lofting - Frank Belknap Long - H.P. Lovecraft - Brian Lumley - George MacDonald - Arthur Machen - Patricia McKillip - Robin McKinley - John Masefield - Richard Matheson - William Mayne - A. Merritt - Hope Mirrlees - Richard Monaco - Michael Moorcock - C.L. Moore - John Morressey - William Morris - H. Warner Munn - Robert Nathan - Edith Nesbit - Larry Niven - Diana Norman - Elizabeth Norman - Joan North - Andre Norton - Andrew Offutt - Alexi & Cori Panshin - Mervyn Peake - Edgar Allan Poe - Tim Powers - Fletcher Pratt - E. Hoffman Price - Richard Purtill - Seabury Quinn - Hugh C. Rae - Tom Reamy - Joanna Russ - Fred Saberhagen - Felix Salten - Robert Silverberg - Clark Ashton Smith - David C. Smith - Thorne Smith - Nancy Springer - Robert Stallman - James Stephens - Mary Stewart - Bram Stoker - Peter Straub - Theodore Sturgeon - Thomas Burnett Swann - Ruth Plumly Thompson - James Thurber - J.R.R. Tolkien - P.L. Travers - Karl Edward Wagner - Hugh Walker - Evangeline Walton - Manly Wade Wellman - H.G. Wells - Robert Westall - T.H. White - Leonard Wibberly - Oscar Wilde - Charles Williams - Austin Tappan Wright - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Roger Zelazny

Whew!As you can see, it's a pretty huge and inclusive list, with room made for many writers better known in other fields and genres (Wells, Masefield, Crowley for example), writers of primarily children's fantasies (Barrie, Grahame, etc) and a few authors not writing in English (Borges).There are certainly lapses and surprising omissions - those that strike me as particularly notable are Mikhail Bulgakov, Italo Calvino, G.K. Chesterton, John Gardner, Franz Kafka, John Myers Myers and Isaac Bashevis Singer; though to be fair only Calvino and Chesterton strike me as among the very most important writers in terms of their contributions to this genre alone (Kafka is arguable I guess).It's also not stated, but apparent that the authors weren't interested in reaching back further than the mid-19th century, so none of the gothics from the Georgian era are represented, nor is Jonathan Swift here.

But these are minor quibbles.This remains a valuable book for the coverage of many still-very-obscure writers, and for the passion and enthusiasm that principal author Baird Searles and his cowriters Beth Meacham and Michael Franklin brought to the project.Searles I know is dead now, and it seems that in this Internet era there is less interest and less obvious for such a volume, but I'd still be happy to see an updated and expanded edition.There's no replacing scholarship and the knowledge of professionals in projects as large as the cataloguing of a whole genre, and there are always plenty of great obscurities from the past that are waiting to be unearthed - and are more likely to be by the readers of works like this.

I'd also highly recommend the same writers' A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction - also, like this book, long out of print and out of date, but still useful for those exploring the less-traversed byways of the genre's long history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Long out of date, but not yet out of use to anyone who cares about SF's long history
The late 1970s and early 1980s were boom years for science fiction; the twin mega-successes of STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (in 1977) in the cinema helped spur on a huge growth in the field - in film, TV, games, comics, and of course in literature, the foundation of the genre.Along with this came a surge in interest for popular reference works, guidebooks and the like; as a kid just getting into the field at the time, I accumulated quite a few of them, and some of those early books - even the outdated ones - remain very useful.Probably the two best that I've used are The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, from 1977 and The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, first published in 1979 and updated in the early 1990s.These books are of course out of date but still contain a wealth of great information on the genre's authors, themes, and works - some of it not that easy to find now, even in the internet age.

The same can be said of this work from 1979 by longtime SF book critic and bookseller Baird Searles and coauthors Martin Last, Beth Meacham and Michael Franklin - but unlike the other books I mentioned, this is short, very accessible, and more readily and cheaply available.It's a good starting point if you're interested in some of the great names - and obscure and forgotten names - from the genre's rich past.Like its companion volume A Reader's Guide to Fantasy published a couple of years later, it's divided into several short sections - a rundown of SF book series, a list of the authors' personal favorites, a brief history of the field from "Frankenstein" to the then-present, a listing of awards - and one large section which is the bulk of the book, an alphabetical guide to major authors, with short descriptions of their careers and work.The authors receive anywhere from a short paragraph to 2 1/2 pages - I believe H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon have the largest entries.In the interest of thoroughness and to give the reader of this review a good idea of what's included, here are the writers covered:

Mark Adlard - Alan Burt Akers - Brian Aldiss - Poul Anderson - Piers Anthony - Christopher Anvil - Isaac Asimov - J.G. Ballard - T.J. Bass - Barrington J. Bailey - Greg Benford - Alfred Bester - Lloyd Biggle Jr - Eando Binder - Michael Bishop - James Blish - Ben Bova - John Boyd - Leigh Brackett - Ray Bradbury - Marion Zimmer Bradley - Fredric Brown - John Brunner - Edward Bryan - Algis Budrys - Kenneth Bulmer - Edgar Rice Burroughs - F.M. Busby - John W. Campbell - Terry Carr - Angela Carter - Lin Carter - Jack Chalker - A. Bertram Chandler - C.J. Cherryh - Robert Chilson - John Christopher - Arthur C. Clarke - Hal Clement - Stanton A. Coblentz - D.G. Compton - Michael G. Coney - Edmund Cooper - Arthur Byron Cover - Richard Cowper - John Crowley - Ray Cummings - Avram Davidson - L. Sprague DeCamp - Samuel R. Delany - Lester Del Rey - Philip K. Dick - Gordon R. Dickson - Thomas M. Disch - Arthur Conan Doyle - George Alec Effinger - Gordon Eklund - Harlan Ellison - George Allan England - Ralph Milne Farley - Philip Jose Farmer - Mick Farren - Jonathan Fast - Homer Eon Flint - Alan Dean Foster - Raymond Z. Gallun - Randall Garrett - Jane Gaskell - Jean Mark Gawron - Hugo Gernsback - David Gerrold - Mark S. Geston - H.L. Gold - Felix Gotschalk - Ron Goulart - Charles L. Grant - Joseph Green - James Gunn - H. Rider Haggard - Joe Haldeman - Austin Hall - Edmond Hamilton - Charles Harness - Harry Harrison - M. John Harrison - Robert A. Heinlein - Zenna Henderson - Frank Herbert - William Hope Hodgson - Fred Hoyle - L. Ron Hubbard - Zach Hughes - John Jakes - Laurence Janifer - D. F. Jones - Neil R. Jones - Raymond F. Jones - Colin Kapp - Daniel Keyes - Otis Adelbert Kline - Damon Knight - Dean Koontz - C.M. Kornbluth - Michael Kurland - Henry Kuttner - R.A. Lafferty - David J. Lake - Simon Lang - Sterling Lanier - Keith Laumer - Tanith Lee - Ursula K. LeGuin - Fritz Leiber - Murray Leinster - Stanislaw Lem - C.S. Lewis - Frank Belknap Long - H.P. Lovecraft - Sam J. Lundwall - Richard A. Lupoff - Barry N. Malzberg - George R.R. Martin - Richard Matheson - Anne McCaffrey - J.T. McIntosh - Vonda N. McIntyre - Richard C. Meredith - Judith Merrill - A. Merritt - Sam Merwin Jr - Walter Miller - Naomi Mitchison - Michael Moorcock - C.L. Moore - John Morressey - Larry Niven - John Norman - Andre Norton - Alan E. Nourse, Philip Nowlan, Andrew J. Offutt - Chad Oliver - Edgar Pangborn - Alexei Panshin - H. Beam Piper - Doris Piserchia - Frederik Pohl - Jerry Pournelle - Fletcher Pratt - Christopher Priest - Marta Randall - John Rankine - Mack Reynolds - Keith Roberts - Spider Robinson - William Rotsler - Joanna Russ - Eric Frank Russell - Fred Saberhagen - Margaret St. Clair - Pamela Sargeant - James H. Schmitz - Thomas Scortia - Richard Shaver - Bob Shaw - Robert Sheckley - Mary Shelley - Robert Silverberg - Clifford D. Simak - John Sladek - Cordwainer Smith - Clark Ashton Smith - E.E. "Doc" Smith - George O. Smith - Norman Spinrad - Brian Stableford - Olaf Stapledon - Bill Starr - Christopher Stasheff - Arkadi & Boris Strugatsky - Theodore Sturgeon - John Taine - Stephen Tall - William Tenn - James Tiptree Jr - E.C. Tubb - Wilson Tucker - Jack Vance - Sydney Van Scyoc - A.E. Van Vogt - John Varley - Jules Verne - Vernor Vinge - Ian Wallace - Stanley G. Weinbaum - Manly Wade Wellman - H.G. Wells - James White - Kate Wilhelm - Jack Williamson - Gene Wolfe - S. Fowler Wright - Philip Wylie - John Windham - George Zebrowski - Roger Zelazny

A big list, eh?One thing to note is that the earliest writer mentioned is Mary Shelley - this history then only reaches back to her publication of "Frankenstein" in 1818.Of course there is little dating from before this date that is remembered, or considered "science fiction", but it's instructive to notice that much of the earlier work would fall into the utopian vein (starting with Thomas More's 1516 "Utopia"), and if there's a huge gap in this book's coverage, it is in fact a lack of attention paid to the many mainstream writers who tackled utopian and dystopian themes, particularly from the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries.A large percentage of these excluded writers are known primarily for such works:

Edward Bellamy, Pierre Boulle, Samuel Butler, Karel Capek, George Griffith, Aldous Huxley, S.P. Meek, William Morris, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, M.P. Shiel, Kurt Vonnegut, Evgeny Zamiatin

Still one can't be too fussy - it's a short book, meant to be inexpensive and useful for the novice in the field, and it accomplished it's goal in that regard as far as I was concerned.Plenty of the obscure writers on the big list above I discovered through this book; some I still haven't discovered.Even in this era of seemingly unlimited information about everything, there are writers that you'll find little about beyond what's in this modest volume - and it's nice to have some professional, learned guides to sort it all out.Maybe it's even more useful now.Certainly I wouldn't mind seeing this volume and it's companion updated or redone, with the richness in the field over the last 30 years noted - but with the older writers given their due, and brought to new light.

Needs Updating Badly!
'A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction' was an excellent book when it was first published over 20 years ago.Updating the book would be an excellent (and badly needed) project for Mr. Searles, et al, or some other sf/f lover.

The authors do a good job of explaining the strengths (and weaknesses) of each writer as well as covering their major works.Also at the end of each writer's section is included a "If you like the works of Fred Smith, try these writers..."

Many of the writers included in the book are all but forgotten in the year 2002.Also many sf/f talents from the past 20 years are sorely missing, including Nancy Kress, Connie Willis, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Swanwick, Orson Scott Card, and a multitude of others.If this book were updated, it would fly off the shelves.Anybody listening? ... Read more

Product Description
BRAND NEW 2005 HARDBACK EDITION, SOME SHELFWEAR MARKS. OVERSTOCK MARK.. ... Read more

Product Description
Vol. 4 (of 8) of the "New American Pulp." WEIRD HEROES was a series of novels and anthologies that dealt with new heroic characters inspired by the classic pulp magazines. And like the pulps, the series was also heavy on art, having many well-known artists illustrate the stories. This is one of the four novels in the series. ... Read more

Product Description
A programme of 97 exercises, illustrated with over 300 step-by-step photographs, which are designed to tone every part of the body. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

My son loves it
My 8-year-old son's art teacher has this book in her classroom. My son fell in love with it. It has great artwork of famous aliens, as well as quick facts on each one, including what science fiction work it came from. A nice intro to the world of sci-fi - and a nice intro to some great literature, too.

YOU SAY YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT A GOWACHIN, IXTL OR DIRDIR LOOKS LIKE?WELL SEACH NO FURTHER!
Like a couple of other reviewers here, I have had this book in my possession for well over thirty years now; starting with the early 1979 paper back edition and graduating to the 1987 hardback when I wore the first out.At the time it was published there really was not much competition in this field and I am unaware of any comprehensive "collections" of this ilk to that point.Despite its age, this is still a wonderful work and as much as I hate to use the word "must," in this case I am forced to do so in my recommendation to any serious student of the Science Fiction genre.

The author has taken over fifty works by well known authors, used some of their most important works and rendered his interpretation of the alien beings inhabiting these works.He has given us wonderfully executed visuals of the works of Heinlein (Have Spacesuit Will Travel), Tiptree (Up the Walls of the World), Silverberg (Downward to Earth), Asimov (The Gods Themselves), Piers Anthony (Kirlian Quest), Pohl (The Age of the Pussyfoot), A.E. van Vogt (The Voyage of the Space Beagle), Herbert (Dune Messiah), Frank Herbert, Harry Harrison, Jack Chalker and many, many, many others.

Each drawing rendered is accompanied by a text on the opposite page giving us such information as Physical Characteristics, habitat, Culture, Reproduction, History and the like.The author has set this work up much like a bird or animal field guide.Now I grant you, some of the text is rather tongue-in-cheek as has been pointed out by others here, but it is well done and an absolute delight to read.

When I read science fiction for fantasy, I always (like most of us do) have a visual picture in my head of the people inhabiting the world the author builds.I have always amazed as to how close Wayne Douglas Barlowe came to the images I had in my own mind.I must say though that on several occasions, the artist's opinion differed considerable with mine...this is a good thing though.If you had 20 people draw any given character of any of these stories, I suspect you would have twenty different alien critter pictures.That is what makes this genre so fascinating and so versatile.

The colors here are crisp and each and every illustration in meticulously executed.You can spend quite a number of hours, repeated hours over the years, and never tire of leafing through this one.I must say also that my grandsons, who have not read one of the stories or authors addressed in this book, have all enjoyed gong over and over it themselves down through the years.One of the wonderful features of this book is the last section where we have a collection of pencil drawings which have been taken directly from the artist's sketchbook showing prep work, notes and structural cut-aways. This is an absolute delight!

This can certainly be classified as a classic of its type and belongs in the library of any science fiction lover. Do you recognize the names of Abyormenites, Cygnans, Dirdirs, Gowachins, Ishtarians, Ixchels, the Old One, the Pnume, Puppeteers, or Sirian?If so, then you will be reacquainted here; if not, then you have been missing some great reading adventures. I promise you that you will meet many old friends in and on the pages of this book!

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

One-of-a-kind book when published is still just as enjoyable today
I've had this book for 30 years, as of this month; my copy is the first paperback edition from October 1979.If there had been anything of the kind published up to that point, I sure wasn't - and am not now - aware of it.Wayne Barlow illustrates a "guide" to 50 well-known extraterrestrials from equally well-known science fiction novels and stories by mostly famous writers of the mid-20th century, and Ian Summers provides the tongue-in-cheek text; each entry has a full-page illo on the right page with the text and smaller, detail illustrations facing it.In the center is a fold-out chart showing the relative sizes of the creatures depicted, from tiny Mesklinites (Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY) to the huge dragon-like Velantian (Doc Smith's CHILDREN OF THE LENS).Stanislaw Lem's sentient planet SOLARIS from the novel of the same name is, obviously, not presented to scale.

The beings depicted are all sentient species, presented as if posed with just a white background, and just enough details of their physiologies and cultures given to whet the appetite of the prospective reader.I can tell you that I've picked up more than a couple of books over the years based solely on reading about and seeing the alien species depicted herein.Some of my favorites, besides those I've mentioned, are the nearly unkillable Ixtl from A.E. Van Vogt's VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE (I wish the Couerl from the same volume had been included, but there is only one species per book), the Czill from Jack Chalker's WELL WORLD series, and the Puppeteer from Larry Niven's RINGWORLD.The paintings are colorful and highly detailed; Barlowe was also a regular SF cover artist in the late 70s and 80s and I've always recognized his style instantly since owning this book.

In the back are a series of sketches from an abortive project called THYPE in black and white that to my knowledge hasn't gone much further, at least in print, since this was published; too bad, the sketches are intriguing and all seem to mesh with each other nicely - it's easy to imagine a desert world featuring the races and creatures so carefully detailed here.

Still as much fun and nice to look at as it was when published; though there have been far more science fiction artbooks and fictional guidebooks published in the interim, this remains a still-relevant granddaddy in the field.

Barlowe`s Guide is a classic! A Field Guide for the Sci-Fi Novel.
I remember getting this wonderful book when it first came out and being amazed at seeing such professional paintings of the creatures and beings from many of my favorite science fiction novels.The illustrations are so well-done that even non-sci-fi fans enjoy them.The sketchbook section in the back of the volume is particuarly fun to look at.Anybody who has read some,or all,of the novels Mr.Barlowe used to people "Guide to Extraterrestrials" will get a kick out of comparing Barlowe`s version to the version you created while reading a particular novel.Over the years I have either lost or lent out 3 copies of the 'Guide'...and I always replace it.
Thank you for reading!

Amazing
It could be science fiction
myths...
unrealistic scenario,
but certainly it is amazing.
So much work went in the
preparation of this book.
So much details.
My God!
It is really amazing....


S. Mahdi, Cairo, Egypt. ... Read more

Product Description
Vol. 4 (of 8) of the "New American Pulp." WEIRD HEROES was a series of novels and anthologies that dealt with new heroic characters inspired by the classic pulp magazines. And like the pulps, the series was also heavy on art, having many well-known artists illustrate the stories. This is one of the four novels in the series. ... Read more