Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Introduction to the Online Text

Please note that the bulk of this 1997 text has been only slightly updated.

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), edited by John Clute and John Grant, was conceived as a sister volume to the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993) edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls. For contributing and consultant editors, plus further publication details, see Title Page and Copyrights. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy won the Eaton Award for best critical book, the Hugo Award as best related book, the Locus Award as best nonfiction, the Mythopoeic Award for general fantasy scholarship and the World Fantasy Award in the category Special Award: Professional.

The online version appears by kind permission of John Clute and John Grant, and is primarily intended to clarify references to Encyclopedia of Fantasy theme or motif entries referenced in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: Third Edition (2011-current web) edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight.

This digital text was originally prepared by David Langford for possible CD-ROM release in 1999 but not in fact published in this form. It incorporates corrections and addenda to that date, many of these having been included in the 1999 paperback edition and more published online (see Addenda and the Digital Edition). It has not been possible to carry out a full updating of this large text, although post-1993 death dates have been inserted where known.

See Contributors for a full listing of all those who wrote entries for The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. The Incoming button provided at the head of each entry shows, as well as a list of entries linking to the current one, an expansion of the contributors' initials with which most entries are signed.

Some statistics follow. The present online text, expanded from the book version (again see Addenda and the Digital Edition), has 4132 entries with a total word count of 1,192,781 words. The entry count comprises 2844 full entries and 1288 cross-reference entries which direct readers to one or more full entries. There are 42,173 internal links, corresponding to small-caps cross-reference indicators in the printed book. The most prolific contributors, with 100 or more solo entry credits, are:

For the purposes of this "league table" we give credit for each separately signed section within large omnium-gatherum entries like Batman Movies, which seems only fair.

further prelim pages

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