Weird fiction [online resource]. Available at: http://www.wands.demon.co.uk/index.html
Rating: oo
Reference type: Bibliographical
Authority: No authorship of any kind is apparent on this page. The site's ISP is the major one in the United Kingdom, demon.co.uk..
Audience Relation: Science fiction writers are also science fiction readers. Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of an author's body of work with regards to what has been written or what is in a series. This site addresses that need.
Scope: This site covers science fiction, fantasy, supernatural, and horror writers, or as it refers to these genres, the "weird" authors. This site list 987 author bibliographies, which is quite extensive, but by no means all inclusive. However, all of the major, and most of the minor authors seem to be represented.
Content Evaluation: The front page of this site is simple and small. It states the purpose of the site, how many entries it contains, and offers an alphabet on the left hand side for browsing. The page does have several drawbacks. One is a number of small, flashing advertisements. Another is the layout of the alphabet; it is vertical rather than horizontal. Still another is the red on blue color scheme. This is just a touch hard on the eyes. Yet one more is the absence of a search engine. If one had a title of a book but not the author, it would be very difficult to find that sort of information on this site.
The entries for each author are fairly complete. A brief survey of some well-know authors revealed that most all of their works are listed here in nice categories. The works are broken down by stand alone titles, series (each series being a separate entry), anthologies by the author, and other anthologies that include the author's work. The site is not limited by works in print. And, some of the entries are augmented by a link to the cover art. The site also links to Amazon.com for easy purchase of the books that are still in print. Of the authors reviewed at this site, all the information seemed to be current and accurate.
Overall, this site is not as extensive as other online bibliographies that focus on each individual author, but for the sheer number of authors covered, it can't be touched. Perhaps improvements will occur in time to solve some of the problems mentioned here.
Availability: http://www.wands.demon.co.uk/index.html
