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Full Text
RR 2006/371
Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB)
Al von Ruff and others
Cushing Library Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection and Institute for Scientific Computation, Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
1995
URL: www.isfdb.org
Gratis
Last visited May 2006
Keywords Bibliographies, Electronic media, Fiction
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120610691619
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDE) is an extensive and freely available bibliography of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism and related genres. It primarily covers works of fiction (short and long forms) but also includes entries for essays, poems, reviews, and cover art, as well non-genre works by authors primarily associated with speculative fiction. There are also entries indicating awards for which authors and their works were nominated or which they won. The database includes only works by authors for whom some or all of the published writings have appeared in English (originally or in translation) and generally excludes academic writing. Presently the work of just a few people, the ISFDB is moving toward a model wherein users will be able to edit and expand the database; although conceptually similar to the increasingly familiar wiki model, the editing features use a set of tools specifically designed for the bibliographical format rather than a more general wiki. The editing features were not available to users at the time of review.
The bibliography includes several levels of information. For each author, there are bibliography pages for long works, short works, all works sorted alphabetically, all works sorted chronologically, and an awards and nominations bibliography. Author pages also include birth and death information and pseudonym references, as well as author email address, Wikipedia references and links to relevant pages in...