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Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. By Brian Stableford. New York: Routledge, 2006. 729p. $165 (ISBN 0-41597460-7).
Science fiction fans are a special group. When they know about something, they really know about it. No amount of information is too much. That's why there is an insatiable demand for more reference works explaining more esoteric aspects of the genre, which makes it surprising that we have had to wait this long for a really good reference work on the science that makes it science fiction. Science Fact and Science Fiction treats the truly scientific underpinnings of the field; it eschews the space opera, space cowboys, generic star wars, and fantasy that often are lumped with science fiction in favor of acoustics, chemistry, engineering, paleontology, physics, zoology,...