Lasciate ogni speranza...no, no, forget that. You have reached the index page for this posting of Fancyclopedia II.
Fancyclopedia II was published in 1959 -- the first copies were distributed at the Pittsburgh WorldCon, in fact -- and is now out of date, though many of the articles in it are still valid if you allow for the time difference. So far efforts to replace it with an update are still in draft form.
The purpose in posting it to the Web is (1) to allow corrections
and emendations to be made to Fancyclopedia II itself, and (2) to
generate suggestions for new topics to go into Fancyclopedia III,
not to mention (2a) find turk volunteers willing to prepare draft
articles for Fancyclopedia III. Remembering how much work Cy2
was, I can't imagine Joe Siclari wants to write Cy3 all by
himself.
One of the emendations I'd like to make is to add stuff from the original Fancyclopedia II which isn't in this electronic version: to wit, the original "Additions and Corrections" which I published about a year later and of which I now have no copy; and, most of the illos from the original, which were pretty poor and which the copy I now have available has only as blurry things that can't be converted to *.jpg files. If anyone can help with any of this, you are guaranteed eternal gratitude and 84.3 units of Good Karma.
Speaking of gratitude and karma, it would do all kinds of ghastly things to my
own karma if I didn't express thanks to my dear wife, Tamar Lindsay, for having
converted the original text to electronic form at great cost to her eyesight and
aesthetic sensibilities. (Take a look at the mimeography in the original if you
think I'm just being sentimental there.) I also owe her many thanks for gently
prodding me from time to time as I began to feel daunted by the task.
Special thanks also are due to Rob Hansen, Brian Jordan, and Curt Phillips, who were able to supply text that went missing due to a xerox glitch.
Now, to proceed to the actual Fancyclopedia II files, click on any of the links below. (The odd filenames are because I used the International Phonetic Alphabet.)
-- Dick Eney
This is a copy of the Fancyclopedia II that was available from Dick Eney's web site.
Updated May 26, 2008. If you have a comment or question about these Web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.