All of these stories have seen print previously and this appears to be the first time they’ve been brought together as a collection. It’s certainly worth a look if not actually reading the words.

GF Willmetts June 2001

The Mammoth Encyclopaedia Of Science Fiction by George Mann.
Pub: Robinson. 612 pages (the last 100 being an index) paperback. Price: £9.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-84119-177-9
check out website: www.constablerobinson.com

In the acknowledgements of this book, George Mann claims responsibility for all the mistakes and omissions in this book so I can’t really blame his editor for the number of the things that I found wrong. I wasn’t even out to find any. I was puzzled why such SF authors as Gordon Dickson and Connie Willis were totally ignored with a rather overabundance of Interzone writers who’ve yet to make a significant mark in the genre.

Granted the author says he had to pick and choose but the repetitions in author’s text and bibliographies makes me wonder that with a bit of judicial editing he could easily have made space for 50 more. The text itself wouldn’t have hurt with being tightened up into a more cohesive whole. Other than the inclusion of Douglas Adams death, the rest appears to have been written in less than an 18 month period.

It’s when I came to the film and TV section that I found a lot of the detail in many of them didn’t quite match what I actually saw. Soon as such mistakes happen, this reviewer has to seriously question the validity of the other entries.

With the Terms and Themes section, there is also a serious error with the term ‘bionics’. Author Mann claims it means ‘biological electronics’. Funny that, as Martin Caiden who was one of the first to demonstrate its use in ‘Cyborg’ pulled out the original definition from the Latin meaning ‘like life’.

It is cybernetics that really is the application of bionics in making cyborgs.

There is also an overabundance of adjectives such as ‘excellent’ and ‘fabulous’ without any qualification as to why they should be seen in that light.

The introduction and promotional notes remind that there’s been 7 years since John Klute’s edited SF Encyclopaedia and thinks this is its successor. Unlike that volume, this appears to be the work of one individual rather than a collaborative effort. Science Fiction is too wide a subject these days for anyone to have read all that’s available. The repetition of certain examples goes a long way to indicate that there should have been a lot more reading.

Am I being particularly harsh here? I don’t think so. If you want a book to test how well you know your SF against, then this is an ideal book to nit-pick. There is some useful info towards the back of the book about certain establishments and websites. Our own is mentioned which is a first but you’d have probably used our search engine to find out about other websites yourself.

GF Willmetts July 2001

Hardyware: The Art Of David A. Hardy.
Text by Chris Morgan. Forward by Stephen Baxter.
Pub: Paper Tiger. 128 page hardback. Price: £20 (UK), £29.95 (US). ISBN: 1-85585-917-3
check out website: www.papertiger.co.uk and www.astroart.org.

I have to confess David A. Hardy’s name isn’t one that easily sprung to mind prior to reading this book. Having said that, after reading this book I’m amazed at how many pieces of his work I’ve seen or got in my collection in one form or another. Probably the biggest surprise was finding he’d produced space pictures for the original TV21 comic of the 60s.

If you’re a fan of Chesley Bonestell, you’re going to fall in love with Hardy’s work simply because they share an eye for detail and do research based on what astronomers think things look like on other planets. Where ideas have changed over the years, the art has changed accordingly. As such, these paintings tell us as much about Man as they do about other parts of our Solar System.

Unlike Bonestell, Hardy works across the field of Science Fiction and is extremely prolific from magazine and book covers to record sleeves. It is probably this versatility that has probably denied him being a ‘named’ favourite as he doesn’t appear to specialise in any one area as do other SF artists. That and the fact that his work is predominately landscape, hardware and spaceships rather than humans, aliens and monsters.

The text isn’t wholly by Chris Morgan. Much of it is notes from Hardy himself covering a lot of detail about his work and how it was done. His biography indicates that Hardy is very much a Science Fiction fan as much as a space artist. Give it a look as I think you’ll be surprised at the scope of Hardy’s work.

GF Willmetts July 2001

Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock.
Pub: Millennium. 124 pages medium-size paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-85798-848-5
check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk

I have to confess that I’m not a Michael Moorcock fan. I read a trio of his books when young and found he’s plagiarised Edgar Rice Burroughs. Moorcock even admitted the deed saying he was hard up at the time. That, to my mind, is not an excuse especially when any other writer would be denounced for such a deep.

OK, so I’ve probably alienated all the Moorcock fans reading this review. So be it. So, why am I reading this book, ‘Behold The Man’. Well, I have heard of it over the years just haven’t been able to locate a copy to read. It is the story of dysfunctional time traveler Karl Glogauer wanting to see the last years of Jesus Christ for himself.

The only problem is that when he meets Christ he turns out to be a retarded idiot. Glogauer is already on his way to being recognised as being regarded as a holy man and then takes on the role himself and ultimately dying on the cross. Interspersed with this is Glogauer’s life in the present that led him to take the trip in the first place.

This life is heavily into sex interspersed with religion. If you find this offensive, you’ll also be wearing blinkers over the bad language that is used. This isn’t a book that I would recommend to the religiously pious. Back in the Holy Land, Moorcock portrays the people in a more realistic like tone than icons.

John the Baptist is seen as a potential terrorist and Mary an easy lay. I don’t think Moorcock pulls any punches here and it probably had the same effect in 1969 when it was originally released.

The most annoying thing though is that it's really a very quick read. It’s paced too quickly for any contemplation along the way. Considering most of the books Moorcock wrote at the time were of similar length - I might not read them but I can recognise a book length by its size - I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. Considering other authors of the same period put a lot more work and depth into their novels this still tends to come over as a ‘quickie’ to cover an interesting idea.

GF Willmetts July 2001

The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy edited by Mike Ashley
pub. Constable & Robinson Ltd. 2001. 528 pages. Paperback. Price £6.99. ISBN 1-84119-080-2.
Checkout website: www.constablerobinson.com

‘Awesome’ I think not. Comic? Hmm...maybe. Fantasy ? Quite definitely. So how does comedy mix with fantasy? I suppose viewed from a non-fantasy fan all of it is comic or at least silly and so much rubbish. I always take fantasy writing to be fairly serious stuff, with the possibility of lightness being used occasionally, but with an underlying ability to bring together themes that grab the reader’s attention, and hold on to it.

Mike Ashley has edited many titles for this publisher, wide ranging in scope and evidently very popular world-wide. This collection is well put together, well documented, and contains some stories that have rarely seen the light of day.

Some old (‘The Queen’s Triplets’ by Israel Zangwill, published in 1892) and some new (‘The Swords And The Stones’ by E.K. Grant, published in 2001). Possibly the story which contains little to recommend it but will possibly sell the book is one by John Cleese and Connie Booth. Entitled ‘Happy Valley’, it’s really only a rehashed Monty Python theme.

Silly, as Mike Ashley says, a coup to be included but not much good. No, in spite of well-known names included in this collection, such as Afram Davidson, Cherith Baldry and Michael G. Coney, none of these stories are up to their best writing. If you want to read fantasy, check out the greats such as Robert E. Howard or Michael Moorcock to start with.

If you’ve read ‘em all then I’m sure you know all about the rest. If you want to read comic stuff, go ahead. The two don’t mix, or at least I could not raise any laughs reading this lot. But the element of fantasy is still there, so the editor has captured a little magic.

Phil Stoyle. July 2001