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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy

I just had a look at this page, which gives a breakdown of contributions to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It's not a terribly big deal, but I can count only four people who contributed a larger number of articles to the encyclopedia than I did: Gary Westfahl, Dave Langford, Darrell Schweitzer, and Andy Sawyer (all prodigious commentators on the SF genre, and Westfahl edited the encyclopedia while the others were on its advisory board). Maybe I missed someone, and there were other people who must have worked hard behind the scenes. A couple of the people I just mentioned wrote a helluva lot more entries than I did, and Gary Westfahl must have worked his guts out in the role of editor of the whole shebang, so let's keep things in perspective.

Even so ...

Yeah, not a big deal, but it did surprise me. Those theme entries were incredibly difficult to write - so no wonder, I suppose on reflection, there were not many people foolhardy enough to take on large numbers of them. It took me ages to write my 16,000 words for the encyclopedia.

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