The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

Online references only. No chatter, although a brief explanation of the site is appreciated.

The Ultimate SF Web Guide is Jo's goto reference.
http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF...

It has pages for books, authors, films, aliens, & more.

Wikipedia has a lot of different lists of various qualities.

SF Authors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

SF Novels by Decade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...

List of science fiction novels:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Lists of science fiction films by decade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...

Timeline of science fiction:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin...

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database

The ISFDB is a community effort to catalog works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. It links together various types of bibliographic data: author bibliographies, publication bibliographies, award listings, magazine content listings, anthology and collection content listings, and forthcoming books.
http://www.isfdb.org/

Fantastic Fiction
Bibliographies for over 40,000 authors. Use the browse menu on the left to find an author by surname, or use the search box above to search for an author, book or series.

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/

I primarily use this to look up authors & their works quickly, especially for series by published date. If you copy the page & paste it into notepad.exe, it strips out the thumbnails & makes great lists for keeping track of physical books.

Project Gutenberg is dedicated to making out-of-copyright books available for free to all. Wikipedia has a pretty good article about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...

The main US site is https://gutenberg.org
I often find that it is easier to find a book by putting 'gutenberg' & the author, book, &/or story into an Internet search. You can also find lists by genre & some have torrent files or CDs available with all the works on the list. Here is an example for SF:
https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Scienc...

Since copyright varies between countries, other sites are available around the world. They'll often have works not available in the US & sometimes link to other sites with free books.
Gutenberg Australia: http://gutenberg.net.au/
Gutenberg Canada: http://gutenberg.ca/index.html

Gutenberg DE: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/ (I can't read it as I'm English only.)

The Internet Archive
https://archive.org
has a lot of articles, books, movies, radio, & other material available for free.

They also have "The Wayback Machine" which archives web pages constantly. It's a good place to find a site that has gone missing or been edited.
https://archive.org/web/

There is also the "Open Library" which has lists & collections. Here is one for 'science fiction':
https://openlibrary.org/subjects/scie...

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is exactly what it sounds like. Articles about authors, stories, and themes.

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/

Worlds Without End is a good source regarding Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror books. There are reviews and lots and lots of lists of best reads and award winners and nominees. And they have a blog and a forum.

Like GR, you can keep track of your read and wanna read and see how you're doing on any of the many lists.

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/inde...

Utopias and sci-fi pre-1950 by women authors.

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/wom...

Jim wrote: "Wikipedia has a lot of different lists of various qualities.

SF Authors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

SF Novels by Decade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:..."

If someone has a comment or suggested improvement on any of these, I can (probably) do it. My wiki page:
Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Til...
-- I used to be a LOT more active there than I am now... 😣

And thanks to mods for YA [=yet another] well-done list of refs! I'll look at mine later, & see if I have anything to add.

Neat timeline of the 1950s SF from the library of 'merica here:

http://sciencefiction.loa.org/timelin...

Done in support of one of their anthologies, but it is still neat.

Ed wrote: "Neat timeline of the 1950s SF from the library of 'merica here: http://sciencefiction.loa.org/timelin...
Done in support of one of their anthologies, but it is still neat."

Sure is. I saw Asimov's first novel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_... (1947-50) -- WP doesn't make it clear whether the first mag pub (40K words) is the same as the book. ISFDB suggests that it is (+/-) : http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cg...
And that double-novel cover is a doozy: http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/f/f1...
-- paired with a forgotten Elron potboiler
Cool that his plot is #1 (ims) of Heinlein's story-types: "the brave little tailor"!

Note that the novel is available online as the Galaxy reprint:
https://archive.org/details/galaxy_no...
In a nice, clean e-reader!

I'd forgotten about these, and that Galaxy failed to renew copyrights after they went under. I still have one crumbling, obscure Galaxy novel reprint (I think) in my library?

Yeah, it's covers like those, I think, that turned my mother off SF so much that she still refuses to read anything remotely connected to the genre.

I did not realize that The Martian Chronicles was so old. That would be a good one for this group to discuss... I'm off to check if we have....

Yes we did, here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I found these lists from Josh Glenn on "hilobrow.com" via an old review by Cheryl. They are just one person's opinionated lists, but they are worth looking at because of fabulous original cover images, and short descriptions.

Radium Age Sci-Fi: 100 Best: http://www.hilobrow.com/radium-age-100/

GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI: 1934–1963: http://www.hilobrow.com/golden-age-sc...

New Wave Sci-Fi: 75 Best Novels of 1964–1983: http://www.hilobrow.com/new-wave-sci-fi/

Diamond Age Sci-Fi: 75 Best Novels of 1984–2003: http://www.hilobrow.com/diamond-age-s...

Here's a nice article at Nature:
"Moon on the mind: two millennia of lunar literature"
Fireworks, wild swans and super-cannons were propelling people mentally Moonwards long before 1969, reveals David Seed.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...

Cool illustrations too.

We're going to be nominating the oldest books again soon, so Glenn's website warrants a visit soon. He actually fine-tunes the pre-1920 era/s:
SOME PRE-RADIUM AGE TITLES
RADIUM AGE SCI-FI: THE OUGHTS (1904–1913)
RADIUM AGE SCI-FI: THE TEENS (1914–1923)