E. F. Bleiler

Everett Franklin Bleiler (April 30, 1920 – June 13, 2010) was an editor, bibliographer, and scholar of science fiction, detective fiction, and fantasy literature. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he co-edited the first "year's best" series of science fiction anthologies, and his Checklist of Fantastic Literature has been called "the foundation of modern SF bibliography".^[1] Among his other scholarly works are two Hugo Award–nominated volumes concerning early science fiction—Science-Fiction: The Early Years and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years^[2]—and the massive Guide to Supernatural Fiction.

Bleiler worked at Dover Publications from 1955, becoming executive vice-president of the company from 1967 until he left in 1977; he then worked for Charles Scribner's Sons until 1987.^[1] He edited a number of ghost story collections for Dover, containing what the genre historian Mike Ashley has described as "detailed and exemplary introductions".^[3]

Bleiler received the Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction scholarship in 1984, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1988,^[4] the First Fandom Hall of Fame award in 1994, and the International Horror Guild Living Legend award in 2004.^[1]

In the 1970s Bleiler wrote two works of fiction, which were not published until 2006: the fantasy novel Firegang: A Mythic Fantasy, set in the tree of Yggdrasil as well as moving across time and space, and Magistrate Mai and the Invisible Murderer, a detective story set in ancient China, similar to the work of Robert van Gulik.

Bleiler's son, Richard, is also a science fiction historian and assisted his father on several of his works.^[2]

Selected bibliography

As editor

The Best Science Fiction

• The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949 (with T. E. Dikty)
• The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1950 (with T. E. Dikty)
• The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1951 (with T. E. Dikty)
• The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1952 (with T. E. Dikty)
• The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1953 (with T. E. Dikty)
• The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1954 (with T. E. Dikty)
• Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1952 (with T. E. Dikty)
• Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1953 (with T. E. Dikty)
• Year’s Best Science Fiction Novels: 1954 (with T. E. Dikty)

Other anthologies

• Imagination Unlimited (with T. E. Dikty, 1952)
• Frontiers in Space (with T. E. Dikty, 1955)
• Three Gothic Novels (1966)
• Five Victorian Ghost Novels (1971)
• Eight Dime Novels (1974)
• Three Supernatural Novels of the Victorian Period (1975)
• Three Victorian Detective Novels (1978)
• A Treasury of Victorian Detective Stories (1979)
• A Treasury of Victorian Ghost Stories (1981)

Single-author collections

• Three Prophetic Science Fiction Novels of H. G. Wells (1960)
• Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu (1964)
• Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce (1964)
• The Best Tales of Hoffmann, by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1967)
• The King in Yellow and Other Stories, by Robert W. Chambers (1970)
• Best Max Carrados Detective Stories, by Ernest Bramah (1972)
• Gods, Men and Ghosts, by Lord Dunsany (1972)
• The Best Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories, by R. Austin Freeman (1973)
• Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood (1973)
• Best "Thinking Machine" Detective Stories, by Jacques Futrelle (1973)
• Ghost Stories and Mysteries, by J. S. Le Fanu (1975)
• Best Martin Hewitt Detective Stories, by Arthur Morrison (1976)
• Great Cases of the "Thinking Machine", by Jacques Futrelle (1976)
• The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs J. H. Riddell (1977)
• The Best Supernatural Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle (1979)
• The Old Man in the Corner: Twelve Mysteries, by Baroness Orczy (1980)

Nonfiction

• The Checklist of Fantastic Literature (1948; corrected and revised edition [as The Checklist of Science Fiction and Supernatural Fiction], 1978)
• Science Fiction Writers (1982)
• The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983)
• Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror (1985)
• Science-Fiction: The Early Years (with Richard Bleiler) (1990)
• Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years (with Richard Bleiler) (1998)

Fiction

• Firegang: A Mythic Fantasy. The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box Press, 2006. ISBN 1-55246-728-7
• Magistrate Mai and the Invisible Murderer. The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box Press, 2006. ISBN 1-55246-727-9

References

External links

• Interview with E. F. Bleiler by Brian J. Showers
• Complete E. F. Bleiler bibliography
• Everett F. Bleiler at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Bleiler, Everett F at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 3rd edition