s science fiction has slowly penetrated the ranks of the academic world, it has spawned a need for serious research tools that analyze and critique the genre. It's a niche that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database fills nicely, offering more than 55,000 historical and critical speculative fiction articles, reviews, obituaries, news reports and commentaries.
Database queries are possible based on author, title, subject or imprint, and yield bare-bones entries listing the who, what and when of the resource in question. A more advanced form allows complex
"and/or/and not" type searches, as well as the ability to sort the results based on a given field. Unfortunately, the database doesn't return summaries with its results, so searchers will need to rely solely on the title and keywords to figure out if a given article is right for their purposes.
The site is hosted by Texas A&M University, and the database includes a link to the science fiction and fantasy collection at the university's Cushing Library. This section provides an overview of the library's book, periodical and manuscript collection as well two notable articles: "Horny Toads and Ugly Chickens: A Bibliography on Texas in Speculative Fiction" and "The Man Who Sold the Future: A Research Guide to the Fiction of Robert A. Heinlein."
— Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week—May 6, 2002
efarious fleets thunder across dining room tables around the world, seeking to destroy the flagships of a thousand sentient species, and Starship Combat News is there to cover it all.
The site's dedicated to tabletop starship battle simulations—the stellar equivalent of wargames—ranging from border skirmishes between frigates to massive flight actions involving capital ships and dozens of combatants. The vanguards of fleet combat—Star Fleet Battles, which features space combat in the Star Trek universe, and Babylon 5 Wars, which tackles fights in the venerable space station's universe, are but a few of the 30-odd systems detailed here.
The home page sees frequent updates announcing new product releases, industry announcements, sneak peeks at new miniatures and plenty of other stories sure to make gamers salivate. Each of the major games have its own dedicated news page with new and archived headlines.
The site also offers tabletop captains a way to connect online, thanks to its "online games" section, which links to a variety of Web sites coordinating online battles. Rounding out the site is its "In the Works" section, which discusses games under development, and its stunning photo gallery, which depicts exquisitely painted minis.
— Ken Newquist
Site of the Week—April 29, 2002
recently spent a dollar apiece to purchase several beat-up issues of Patsy and Hedy, one of Marvel Comics' titles from the 1950s slanted toward young female readers, just to get a fix on the art and the sensibility behind it. (Especially intriguing to me, since fashion plate Patsy Walker later went on improbably to become a superhero named Hellcat.) When I was done reading the book, it was falling apart and I knew I'd never read it again. I was left wishing there had been an easier, more economical way to get a sense of what the comic had been about. And now, I find, there is.
The site known as Nick Simon's Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index is, essentially, a gallery of thumbnails of front covers plucked from the output of Marvel Comics from January 1962 to January 1971, with some extensions both forward and backward in time. But the way the material is organized and cross-referenced, the loving care and attention lavished on it, as well as certain ancillary features, all make this site so much more than a collection of pretty, nostalgic pictures.
You can enter this vast cosmos of four-color heroism in any number of ways: by title, artist or theme, for starters. Then there's the fascinating prospect of viewing all titles issued in a given month, much as if you were a grubby-faced kid with a pocket full of quarters salivating in front of the newsstand during, oh, March 1965. The effect of this latter method transports the viewer fully into a vanished era. Intellectual context is provided by two on-staff reviewers, Pierre Comtois and Gregorio Montejo, who explicate selected issues at length.
A huge assortment of links will bring surfers further into online comics fandom. And Simon generously opens up his project to anyone willing to submit scans of artwork he's missing.
As the cover blurb on Fantastic Four number 14 asks, "How much action, how much drama do you crave?" If your answer is "Plenty, pilgrim!", then this is the place for you.
— Paul Di Filippo
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