Science Fiction Resource Guide

Updates are handled by Chaz Boston Baden. Please read the Frequently Asked Questions before you write.

Rev. 09-Oct-2001

Reviews and criticism

Top: Table of Contents

Previous: Publishers

Next: Role-Playing and other SF-Related Games

Sub-sections:

Searchable review archives
Browsable review archives
Critical texts

Searchable review archives

Alexandria Digital Literature (alexlit.com): "Alexandria Digital Literature is all about helping you find the best stories in the world that you haven't read. Yet. Right now, the way we do that is to recommend specific stories to our patrons that they would like to read, but don't necessarily know that they'd like to read them... (I'm a custom-written database system that's designed to correllate ratings between people, and keep track of all the other details of the Library.) ...Every time somebody, such as yourself, drops by and gives me some ratings, I file those away in the back room. Now, sooner or later, somebody else will come along with, lo and behold! tastes very similar to yours. I'll zip through my records, finding all the people I can with similar tastes, and take that stack over to my desk. Then I'll check to see what's popular with them. Now, here's a story that you liked, and that another person liked, and even some of the other people in the stack. Aha! This new person's records show that they haven't read that book! ...It's called "collaborative filtering," since you and all the other nice people who drop by are all in collaboration to screen out books you wouldn't really want to read." (Dave Howell)
Commonplace Review (cpreview.com): "I have a site called the Commonplace Review, that has my reviews of all types of speculative fiction from novels to shorts. I post my own as well as others' opinions of works. They are searchable by keyword, periodical, author, title, date, etc. I think it will be usefull for people looking for good short fiction." (Robert G. Buice, Jr)
First Impressions (sfsite.com): A Monthly Reading Diary by Glen Engel-Cox. "First Impressions began as a response to a request from my cousin, who wanted me to let him know a little bit about what I was reading. I thought, possibly foolishly, that if he was interested, other people might be, too. The first installment was mailed out in January 1993." (Glen Engel-Cox)
Reader's Robot (tnrdlib.bc.ca): "The Reader's Robot is an automated reader's advisor. You select your favorites from 10 groups of award winning novels and, based on your selections, the computer recommends other novels you might enjoy. You are also asked to contribute novels you've enjoyed. That way, the Robot's database grows and your recommendations are passed on to other readers. The robot now only deals with Mystery and Science Fiction novels, but other genres are planned (Horror, Popular Science). The database is presently quite small, but it is growing. You can help it grow! Send comments and suggestions. My skin is thick, constructive criticism is welcomed!" (Kevin Kierans)
Science fiction series guide (ic.ac.uk): Searchable archive of mailing list and newsgroup discussions reviewing science fiction books. "The Guide is an amazingly ambitious project started by John Farrell in January 1990. After about 18 months he got sick to death of it and passed it on to Sverker Johansson." Search for 'introduction' for more information.
SF film and book reviews (unc.edu): Searchable index of film and book reviews archived from various newsgroups.

Browsable review archives

Archive of newsgroup rec.arts.sf.reviews (bio.net): Files are stored in the archive by quarter (reviews for year YY, quarter Q will be in the file archiveYY.Q). There are indexes to each quarter. Reviews more recent than these files are in the file archive.
Archive of newsgroup alt.book.reviews (cic.net)
Author poll results (cmu.edu): These polls asked Usenet readers to score the works of a particular author.
(John Leavitt)
The Book Engine (gu.se): "A place where anyone who feels like it can enter reviews on books in the Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror genre. The reviews are ordered and stored in different files in the Archive. This site has been up for a couple of months now, and has recieved a fair amount of reviews. There's still of a lot of place left in the Archive, so don't hesitate..." (Leif "Fisk" Ryd (gu.se))
Thomas Christensen's book review page (sfbook.com): "One man and a ton of books... Welcome to SFBook.com. On this website you'll find reviews of the books that I've read. Most of the books are Science Fiction, but you'll also find horror, fantasy and mainstream books reviewed." Has reviews of a variety of old and new titles. (Thomas Christensen) [Updated Oct 2001]
Course Materials for the Study of Science Fiction (wsu.edu), Washington State University.: "I created these study guides to help my students prepare for literature classes. They are meant to serve several functions. Some of them provide background to help readers understand what they are reading and why they are reading it (the historical status of the works)... They provide useful information, explaining allusions, obscure terms, etc. in the texts and provide translations of passages written in languages other than English..." (Paul Brians)
Fantasy Book Voting Archive (home.com): "The web site is set up to give people the chance to vote, on a 1-10 scale, the quality of quite a large number of Fantasy books. The results are then organized and average scores for each book are listed. It's a fairly new page..." [Updated Oct 2001]
Fantasy Finder (hoh.se): "Reviews - Fantasy Finder tells you what's good and what's bad, what you definitely should go get and what you should avoid. FantasyLinks - links to fantasy resources on the web. Top 5 - ranks the very best fantasy books and series of all time, and also including Fantasy Finder's Democratic Top List where you can vote for your favourite books." (Henriksson and Henriksson)
The Kevindex (stanford.edu): "A Webazine Devoted to Reviews of Things Fantastical." (Kevin Lauderdale)
Evelyn C. Leeper's Reading List (geocities.com): Lots of book reviews here. (Evelyn C. Leeper (geocities.com))
Alex McLintock's Book Reviews (demon.co.uk): "The following book reviews are my personal opinion on some of the books I have read. Your comments are welcome. I may even add your comments in. I would also like to hear receive your own reviews of related books. All reviews can be read by someone who is considering reading the book. Any thing which should only be read after reading the book will be marked by a spoiler warning." (Alex McLintock)
NESFA Members' Book Reviews (nesfa.org): Reviews by NESFA members of various books which they have read. The list of reviews is in order by Author, and list the reviewer's name in parenthesis. (Ben Yalow)
Ohmori's Lo-Fi Sci-Fi Page (ltokyo.com): Home page of Mr. Nozomi Ohmori, SF Translator. "What's you can see on my page is photographs of Japanese sf writers/editors/translators/fans, and some of Japanese sf arts. I'll make a directory for people over the sea, maybe next week. For those who can read Japanese will find book reviews for over 500 science fiction books, movie reviews, sf-related essays, and hot links for other Japanese sf oriented www pages. All of the articles are originally apeared in professional printed magazines and newspapers." (Nozomi Ohmori)
Postviews (latrobe.edu.au): "A moderate collection of reviews of SF/F (chiefly written)" (Paul-Michael Agapow)
Quarante-Deux (quarante-deux.org): [Website was launched in 1994.] "Quarante-Deux offers documentation on Science Fiction published in French: bibliographical database, reviews, short stories, awards, list of fannish and small press publications." [Sep 2001] (Ellen C. Herzfeld, Dominique O. Martel)
Raymond's Reviews (liu.se): A series of short reviews written between January 90 and April 92. (Eric S. Raymond)
Christina Schulman's Science Fiction Reviews (epihyte.net): "It's a collection of my ongoing efforts to mold the reading habits of the SF community to my petty whims. New reviews are added roughly biweekly." ... "My site is also now searchable [as of May 1999] instead of just browsable." (Christina Schulman) [Updated Oct 2001]
Science Fiction Weekly (scifiweekly.com): "A professional electronic publication of science fiction news, reviews and short stories. We cover books, movies, games, other Web sites and anything else relating to science fiction." (Craig E. Engler)
SF Site: Book Reviews (sfsite.com): (John O'Neill)
Shelves in the Corner: Fantasy and Science Fiction (geocities.com): "Shelves in the Corner offers reviews by readers, for readers among stories, resources, and additional items of interest..." (Hemlocke)
Steven H Silver's SF book reviews (sfsite.com): (Steven H Silver (sfsite.com)) [Updated Oct 2001]
Strange Words (strangewords.com): A reviewzine, lots of bookcover image; you'll need a large monitor or the left-right scroll option on your browser window. Has a no-frames version that works reasonably well on text browsers. Lots of book reviews, and some other features as well. (Eric [no surname provided])
Sweet Despise: Dark Literature Recommended Reading List (eclipse.co.uk): "This is an attempt to put together a rough reading list covering various aspects of dark literature... There should be something in here for everyone." Most of the books have a capsule review. For example, the Graham Masterston novel "Prey" has this write-up: "A novel taking Brown Jenkin, a minor character from one of Lovecraft's short stories, and creating an excellent novel around him as an evil half man-half rat hybrid who steals children in order to sacrifice them. One of the better Cthulhu Mythos novels." (Ian Davey)
Usenet reviews (liu.se): Postings to Usenet on science fiction books, mostly reviews, indexed by author (collected by Mats Öhrman)
Danny Yee's Book Reviews (dannyreviews.com): Reviews of 350 books (so far), heavily cross-indexed by subject, title, author, etc., including science fiction (dannyreviews.com), alternative history (dannyreviews.com), and fantasy (dannyreviews.com). (Danny Yee) [Updated Oct 2001]
Dani Zweig's Belated Reviews (liu.se): A series of reviews of "classic" sf and fantasy works.

Critical texts

Definitions of Science Fiction (panix.com): "These definitions of science fiction are for those of you who are not satisfied with Damon Knight's definition of science fiction, which appears in the rec.arts.sf.written FAQ: 'Science Fiction is what we point at when we say it.'" Contains quotes from over 50 authors and others, from Brian W. Aldiss to Donald A. Wollheim. (Neyir Cenk Gokce)
What is Science Fiction? (treitel.org): (Richard Treitel)
Addenda list for the Fantasy Encyclopedia (gla.ac.uk): New data, typographical errors, factual corrections and miscellanea pertaining to The Encyclopedia of Fantasy edited by John Clute and John Grant. "These addenda to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) were expanded in September 1998 -- by John Clute, John Grant, Gordon Van Gelder and others -- to include all the material now scheduled to appear as an appendix to the paperback edition." (David Langford)
Addenda list for the SF Encyclopedia (gla.ac.uk): New data, typographical errors, factual corrections and miscellanea pertaining to John Clute's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. "(This is, essentially, the update text added at the end of the 1995 US paperback, with a few extra deaths etc. noted.)" (David Langford)
"After the deluge: cyberpunk in the 80s and 90s" (cmu.edu): (Tom Maddox)
"Bio-tech in and out of sf" (cmu.edu): (Normal S. Murray)
"How to pick out a good horror novel" (cmu.edu): (Fiona Oceanstar)
"Jurassic Park or, sympathy for the dinosaur" (cmu.edu): (Joe Sartelle)
"Cyberpunk's a label like any other" (cmu.edu): (Jason Snell)
"Cyberpunk: from subculture to mainstream" (cmu.edu): (McKenzie Wark)
"the Center of the World: Vancouver in William Gibson's Winter Market" (sfu.ca): an article from Vancouver: Representing the Postmodern City. Paul Delany, ed. Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver, 1994. (Paul Delany)
"Elves in Tolkien and folklore" (spies.com): (Peter A van Heusden)

Top: Table of Contents
Previous: Publishers
Next: Role-Playing and other SF-Related Games

Chaz Boston Baden (boston-baden.com) - E-mail SFRG.