Wednesday, June 16, 2010

R.I.P. E. F. Bleiler

A true titan in the field of supernatural literature has passed away.  Everett Franklin Bleiler, born 30 April 1920, died Sunday evening, 13 June 2010, at the age of 90. He leaves a legacy of superlative work that ranges from The Checklist of Fantastic Literature (1948, revised 1978 as The Checklist of Science-Fiction and Supernatural Fiction) on to such indispensible works as The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983), Science-Fiction:  The Early Years (1990) and Science-Fiction:  The Gernsback Years (1998), not to mention the large number of books he edited and introduced for Dover in the 1960s and 1970s. I use his works on a near-daily basis.