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The SF Book of Lists
Collects lists of a wide range of facts and trivia concerning science fiction and fantasy authors and their writings
- GenresScience FictionReference
Paperback
First published November 1, 1983
15 people want to read
About the author
Maxim Jakubowski
280 books161 followersMaxim Jakubowski is a crime, erotic, and science fiction writer and critic.
Jakubowski was born in England by Russian-British and Polish parents, but raised in France. Jakubowski has also lived in Italy and has travelled extensively. Jakubowski edited the science fiction anthology Twenty Houses of the Zodiac in 1979 for the 37th World Science Fiction Convention (Seacon '79) in Brighton. He also contributed a short story to that anthology. He has now published almost 100 books in a variety of areas.
He has worked in book publishing for many years, which he left to open the Murder One bookshop[1], the UK's first specialist crime and mystery bookstore. He contributes to a variety of newspapers and magazines, and was for eight years the crime columnist for Time Out and, presently, since 2000, the crime reviewer for The Guardian. He is also the literary director of London's Crime Scene Festival and a consultant for the International Mystery Film Festival, Noir in Fest, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy. He is one the leading editors in the crime and mystery and erotica field, in which he has published many major anthologies.
His novels include "It's You That I Want To Kiss", "Because She Thought She Loved Me", "The State Of Montana", "On Tenderness Express", "Kiss me Sadly" and "Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer". His short story collections are "Life in the World of Women", "Fools for Lust" and the collaborative "American Casanova". He is a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio and was recently voted the 4th Sexiest Writer of 2,007 on a poll on the crimespace website.
Jakubowski was born in England by Russian-British and Polish parents, but raised in France. Jakubowski has also lived in Italy and has travelled extensively. Jakubowski edited the science fiction anthology Twenty Houses of the Zodiac in 1979 for the 37th World Science Fiction Convention (Seacon '79) in Brighton. He also contributed a short story to that anthology. He has now published almost 100 books in a variety of areas.
He has worked in book publishing for many years, which he left to open the Murder One bookshop[1], the UK's first specialist crime and mystery bookstore. He contributes to a variety of newspapers and magazines, and was for eight years the crime columnist for Time Out and, presently, since 2000, the crime reviewer for The Guardian. He is also the literary director of London's Crime Scene Festival and a consultant for the International Mystery Film Festival, Noir in Fest, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy. He is one the leading editors in the crime and mystery and erotica field, in which he has published many major anthologies.
His novels include "It's You That I Want To Kiss", "Because She Thought She Loved Me", "The State Of Montana", "On Tenderness Express", "Kiss me Sadly" and "Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer". His short story collections are "Life in the World of Women", "Fools for Lust" and the collaborative "American Casanova". He is a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio and was recently voted the 4th Sexiest Writer of 2,007 on a poll on the crimespace website.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 13, 2019
Despite a questionable editorial decision and being 35 years out-of-date, enjoyable and useful for list-o-philes
My copy is a 1983 trade paperback published by Berkeley; I'm not sure if this is the only edition, but it looks as if it might be. The 1980s in retrospect looks like the beginnings of the Information Age as we know it today, not just in that computers were taking off, but in the publishing industry as well. This was an era in which books of lists (including the very popular "The Book of Lists" and "The People's Almanac") were regularly hitting the best-seller lists, and guidebooks of favorite films or books or records were becoming more and more omnipresent. Now of course much of this information is redundant in print, and is much better served on the Internet where one need never worry about it becoming outdated.
But this book is still a rather amusing thing to page through. There are all kinds of "first of" or "best of" lists, lists of women writers, black writers and gay writers (not common in 1983), lists of award winners, lists of longest novels and best-selling novels, and, probably most usefully, a lengthy chronology which lumps the Hugo and Nebula winners for each year in with other notable works, and takes the history back to the early 19th century. There are also many humorous lists, like a series of quotes noted as "Milestones in Bad Science Fiction." Hours of fun are to be had, and it's hard to think of any possible lists of significance the authors may have left out.
The book does have one big, big problem though, which keeps it from getting a fifth star and almost a fourth: there is no order to it, no table of contents, no index; in short, no way to find any particular lists without digging around and paging back and forth. There is SOME, minimal organization; the first several pages features lists involving plot/story elements, i.e. "Great Aliens of Science Fiction" is followed by "Fifteen Important SF stories about first contact"; all of the lists about SF in film and TV are grouped together towards the back of the book. The chronology I mentioned, and other awards and "best of" lists are mostly in the middle. But you wouldn't know any of that without reading this, or paging through the book at some length. How and why the authors chose to make things so difficult for their readers remains a mystery to me.
Still, well worth grabbing if you can find it cheaply and are interested in the classics in the field; some of the lists herein are probably still hard - or impossible - to find online, and it's a fun book to have just lying around.
My copy is a 1983 trade paperback published by Berkeley; I'm not sure if this is the only edition, but it looks as if it might be. The 1980s in retrospect looks like the beginnings of the Information Age as we know it today, not just in that computers were taking off, but in the publishing industry as well. This was an era in which books of lists (including the very popular "The Book of Lists" and "The People's Almanac") were regularly hitting the best-seller lists, and guidebooks of favorite films or books or records were becoming more and more omnipresent. Now of course much of this information is redundant in print, and is much better served on the Internet where one need never worry about it becoming outdated.
But this book is still a rather amusing thing to page through. There are all kinds of "first of" or "best of" lists, lists of women writers, black writers and gay writers (not common in 1983), lists of award winners, lists of longest novels and best-selling novels, and, probably most usefully, a lengthy chronology which lumps the Hugo and Nebula winners for each year in with other notable works, and takes the history back to the early 19th century. There are also many humorous lists, like a series of quotes noted as "Milestones in Bad Science Fiction." Hours of fun are to be had, and it's hard to think of any possible lists of significance the authors may have left out.
The book does have one big, big problem though, which keeps it from getting a fifth star and almost a fourth: there is no order to it, no table of contents, no index; in short, no way to find any particular lists without digging around and paging back and forth. There is SOME, minimal organization; the first several pages features lists involving plot/story elements, i.e. "Great Aliens of Science Fiction" is followed by "Fifteen Important SF stories about first contact"; all of the lists about SF in film and TV are grouped together towards the back of the book. The chronology I mentioned, and other awards and "best of" lists are mostly in the middle. But you wouldn't know any of that without reading this, or paging through the book at some length. How and why the authors chose to make things so difficult for their readers remains a mystery to me.
Still, well worth grabbing if you can find it cheaply and are interested in the classics in the field; some of the lists herein are probably still hard - or impossible - to find online, and it's a fun book to have just lying around.
November 22, 2009
A fun collection of lists on all things Science Fiction, unfortunately quite dated now but still fun.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews