We have now received a copy of the dreadfully garish The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Themes, Works, and Wonders in three volumes, edited by Gary Westfahl, Foreword by Neil Gaiman, in which both brisingamen and I feature - though I cannot now recall exactly which entries I did write. Just by flicking through a random I came across my pieces on 'Islands' and Strange Case of Doctor Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, but I know there were quite a few more than that. I do recall that when we were writing these pieces that MKS proved once again that she is far more naturally talented than I am when it comes to writing encyclopedia entries.

But it is the garishness of the covers that gets me. Each volume has a highly coloured collage of the sorts of illustrations that used to grace sf magazines before sf magazines discovered such a thing as taste. These are $200 reference books, so screaming out on the bookshop shelves is not going to get them many sales. But I wonder how well these covers will go down in the muted tattiness of an average university library?