Book Search Resources

[M. Robert Gibson]

I'm surprised this hasn't been done before (unless it has and I can't find it) but it seems like a sensible idea to have a list of useful book searching resources.

I'm going to kick off with the advanced search menu at the The Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Advanced Search

www.isfdb.org

and a couple of the more useful advanced searches:
Titles

Advanced Title Search

www.isfdb.org

and Notes

Notes Search

www.isfdb.org

Mods - perhaps this could be pinned?

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Then there is Google's advanced book search

Advanced Book Search

and Goodreads' search

Search results for "" (showing 1-0 of 0 books)

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

The advanced search at WorldCat.org, which, for some reason, is labelled in German, even though English is selected

WorldCat.org

WorldCat.org is a global catalog of library materials. You can search for books, music, video, articles and much more at libraries near you.

www.worldcat.org

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

The Science Fiction and Fantasy searches at OpenLibrary.org

Science fiction | Open Library

Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Read, borrow, and discover more than 3M books for free.

openlibrary.org

Fantasy | Open Library

Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Read, borrow, and discover more than 3M books for free.

openlibrary.org

 

[The Judge]

Good idea. I'll sticky this for you.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Here's the advanced search over at Amazon.com. One of the options in the subject box is Science Fiction and Fantasy

Amazon.com: Advanced Search: Books

Online shopping for Advanced Search from a great selection at Books Store.

www.amazon.com

and the advanced search at AbeBooks

Book Search

Might as well add the advanced search at Biblio

Advanced book search - Find used, out-of-print, antiquarian and rare books

Biblio can help you find that long lost favorite, signed book, first edition or a great reading copy. Our book search is simple and easy to use plus has advanced features for seasoned Bibliophiles.

www.biblio.com

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Here's a rather apt article

How to Find a Book Without Knowing the Title or Author

Can't remember the title of a book? These tips will help you can find any book's title or author with just a vague description of the plot.

www.makeuseof.com

 

[Dave]

The Locus website used to be good for books, but especially for short stories in magazines. They seem to have updated it a little, but this page has an archive by year at the side (only back to 2002 and some via the wayback machine).

2019 Directory

This page compiles 2019 books 1) reviewed in Locus Magazine; 2) listed in Locus Online’s New Titles & Bestsellers pages; 3) and selected forthcoming titles not yet seen. Jump down to: Nov…

locusmag.com

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

A possibly useful site for searching covers, provided they are bad
Credit to @TomMazanec by way of @Vince W

Good Show Sir - Only the worst Sci-fi/Fantasy book covers

Good Show Sir! Awful, terrible and simply the worst Science Fiction & Fantasy book covers for your enjoyment! Send us your terrible covers so we can document the carnage to our eyes!

www.goodshowsir.co.uk

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

On doing a search for something else, I came across this site which allows a text search of books and articles

The Unz Review

A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media

www.unz.com

 

[TomMazanec]

Actually I got the book cover link from a post by Vince W.

 

[Rodders]

I’ve always loved science Fiction book cover art and often wondered if there was some kind of resource that catalogues them.

I particularly like book art that encompasses a series of books and my favourite of these was the nineties Dune book covers, which when laid end to end was a single piece of art work.

I also find books with multiple cover art interesting too.

 

[Ravensquawk]

On doing a search for something else, I came across this site which allows a text search of books and articles

The Unz Review

A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media

www.unz.com

I'd never known about The Unz review and might have lived an entire life not knowing, if you hadn't used it to solve two questions on too-obscure stories, here on this board.

I had never heard of it until you used it in answers to my question about the Bald Headed Mirage, and someone's question about the Short Ones.

And now, it dug up another long lost story! A decades-lost story I thought I'd never, ever, not ever find again.
It was helped by fortune, because the only other phrase I remembered and tried just produced a lot of irrelevant "stuff". About politics. A reference to a bush produced policies by Bush, etc.
The Unz dot org site makes it easier to do a search.

If anyone ever asks about these stories, I'm loaded and ready to fire a volley of facts.

Almost no one does. Boards get the repeats of What was that little accelerated race of experimental people, and Who was the family that was afraid of being caught in the rain? and Where did it stop raining only one day in seven years? and What star went nova to shine on earth? and What was the story of many computers being asked to reverse entropy until one said let there be light?

But some diggers dug up a bald headed mirage and the Short Ones after my life of whacked-out memories with no answers to let them rest.

What a good resource. Limited, but sometimes when you can't remember enough of a story to ask an intelligent, detailed question (not that every book search question meets that criterion), Unz can reunite you with stories that have played hob with your memory for your entire adult life.

 

[TomMazanec]

Here are more book covers, on this site:

https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/574367/

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I've just found another site which may prove useful for future searches

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

The

www.sfsite.com

 

[JunkMonkey]

I, for one, will not be using Unz review for anything as it clearly a part of the Alt.Right antisemitism, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theory, white supremacist bullsh**.

 

[Extollager]

On doing a search for something else, I came across this site which allows a text search of books and articles

The Unz Review

A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media

www.unz.com

I value this site for its files of an excellent defunct London-based magazine, Encounter, to which innumerable lights, from Arthur Koestler to Vaclav Havel to W. H. Auden, contributed. The conversation of Kingsley Amis, Brian Aldiss, and C. S. Lewis about science fiction was reprinted there from an obscure magazine. If some jinni were to offer me the complete file of some 20th-century magazine in English -- Encounter would be the first thing to come to my mind, I suppose. Said jinni not having materialized, I will visit the Unz site despite my disagreement with some content there.

 

[otistdog]

For stories that feature mathematical ideas, you can frequently find mention of them at Alex Kasman's MathFiction site.

For the most notable examples of a given theme, you can often find something in the SF Encyclopedia.

For examples of particular invention ideas, you can sometimes find something at the Technovelgy site.

Although it involves sifting through a lot of noise, you will occasionally run across examples of similar stories organized by tropes at tvtropes.org.

 

[Extollager]

If some jinni were to offer me the complete file of some 20th-century magazine in English -- Encounter would be the first thing to come to my mind, I suppose. Said jinni not having materialized, I will visit the Unz site despite my disagreement with some content there.

Whoops! Jinn is the singular, jinni the plural. Sorry!

 

[The Judge]

Whoops! Jinn is the singular, jinni the plural. Sorry!

Nope, you were right with the original ie jinni is the singular (which was anglicised as jinnee at one point, but is more usually seen as genie) and jinn is the plural. (As it happens I'm writing about one for the Kraxon serial and in the end I went with using "djinn" as both singular and plural, since I worried it might be too confusing to use "djinni" which isn't familiar to everyone, though I now wish -- far too late! -- that I hadn't compromised on that.)