Really, I found this just so disappointing, I am not lexicographer and I am not an expert of how a dictionary should work, but I found it really very lacking.

There are too few words to begin with. How many actual words in this dictionary? I am not expert enough to list off all the words I would have included.

I look for the explanation, history, x-ref and a little useage.

I found the reliance on just listing many phrases where the term was used a real overkill. I can get the picture after one or two quotes, I really found the dictionary becoming tedious as opposed to entertaining and it lacked a depth, that the quotes didn’t sate for me, at least.

There are not enough words to really have fun jumping around, and there is no shortage of empty pages -at the end of each letter.

Maybe I am looking for something else, its hard, I suppose, The Encyclopaedia of SF is such a gem, even now, so many years after publication, and I have enjoyed Penguin and Oxford dictionaries of subjects and literary dictionaries and have looked at other dictionaries to see why I enjoyed them.

Obviously the editor had his own objective, and it is a difficult area, in my opinion to be original in, does one do a literary dictionary, does one just focus on SF terms, as he has done, or should it be like a mini encyclopaedia, for me, I wanted something different from the dictionary and I really felt let down as it didn’t deliver on enjoyment, for me at least.To choose terms is fair enough, but it feels like list upon list of quotes.

The cover was so good too.
And I like this type of thing.

Not sure.

Oh, but the reason I was typing was to say I got my Matrix and Vector. This morning.

Or the Pocket Essentials Philip K Dick (second edition).

I’ll avoid trying to pull apart the semantics of the word “appeared” in the criteria and take the word “first” as implied.

Must track down the Russ (and find out where I stuck my copy of Magic Mommas, no doubt still in the padded envelope it came back from FJM in. And probably innabox)