Talk:The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

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Mock travel guide[edit]

Based on the article, without knowing the book, I have added to the lead "Yet it may be called a fictional or parody tourist guide."

We need more physical description, which will partly support or undermine the point. What is the size of the early paperback editions? What is the ISFDB-so-called "mini-hardcover" (Gollancz, 2004) --is it typical pocketbook size? What about the Revised and Updated Edition (hardcover, 2006)? Price $10.99 is low for a hardcover book but it fits the travel guide genre. --P64 (talk) 20:35, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Library of Congress data[edit]

Copied from the US Library of Congress Catalog LCC entry.

(quote)
Main title: The tough guide to Fantasyland / Diana Wynne Jones.

Published/Created: London : Vista, 1996.

Description: 223 p. ; 18 cm.

ISBN: 057560106X (pbk)

Subjects: Jones, Diana Wynne --Authorship --Dictionaries. Children’s stories, English --Dictionaries. Fantasy fiction, English --Dictionaries.

LC classification: PR6060.O497 Z468 1996

Dewey class no.: 828/.91407

National bib no.: GB96-30010

Other system no.: (OCoLC)34674975

(end quote) --P64 (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Revised and Updated Edition LCC entry

(quote)
Main title: The tough guide to Fantasyland / Diana Wynne Jones.

Edition: Rev. and updated ed.

Published/Created: New York : Firebird, c2006.

Related titles: The essential guide to fantasy travel.

Description: 234 p. : ill., map ; 21 cm.

ISBN: 0142407224 9780142407226 9780142407226

Notes: "The essential guide to fantasy travel"--Cover. "Dark Lord approved"--Cover. Firebird travel"--Spine.

Subjects: Jones, Diana Wynne --Authorship --Dictionaries. Children’s stories, English --Dictionaries. Fantasy fiction, English --Dictionaries.

LC classification: PR6060.O497 Z468 2006

Dewey class no.: 828/.91407

Other system no.: (OCoLC)ocm64289475 (OCoLC)64289475

(end quote) LC also provides this Publisher description

How I Came to Write This Guidebook (2006)[edit]

This essay is published on the inside back cover of the revised and expanded edition.[1] My public library provides electronic security in a way that obscures part of it. Here is a transcript, incomplete and in progress.

Late in 1994, I was recovering from surgery, a situation I found myself in rather often during that decade. This time I was more than usually bored and impatient. Knowing this, John Clute suggested that I might help Chris Bell work through the projected entries for The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which he was then compiling with John Grant. It was the perfect occupation. I lay in bed. Chrisarrived every morning with an enormous sheaf of printouts (for there were many more proposed entries than actually appeared in the finished Encyclopedia) and we both got to work. Our job was to decide whether each entry was necessary, to suggest new ones, to discuss whether some of the entries made sense (many didn't), and to provide examples in support of what each entry said.

Well, we had after a week or so reached the letter N and the entry for Nunnery when I realised that we had for the most part been speaking in chorus. We knew most of the books concerned so well. {incomplete in four locations from this point} ... ... Nunneries are for sacking! There is usually one survivor. And both ... out laughing. I said, "You know, most of these book are so much the same that I could write the guidebook on the country they happen in." Chris said, "Yes, but we're on O now. Do they really need this entry called Obsessed Seeker?". I forget what I answered. I was too busy realising that I could and should write the guidebook to Fantasyland.

I started The Tough Guide a few days later and became so immersed in it that I am, to this day, a little vague about the later parts of the Encyclopedia, and I almost forgot to do my own entry for it, on Magic. John Grant, for a ... patient man, became almost an impatient with me, but I think he forgave me when he was asked to be copy editor of the first edition of Tough Guide to Fantasyland. He enjoyed it so much that he kept ringing me up and suggesting further entries, ... ... jokes.

—Diana Wynne Jones

Autumn 2006 [two lines flushright]

--P64 (talk) 20:58, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Against brighter light I have been able to read most of the bottom left quadrant. Now ... ... (2) and ... (2) represent several-word and one?-word gaps respectively.

Chris Bell (author) is someway into fantasy/horror, but more into music; a native of Wales, which fits; younger than I expect but plausible in age. He may be the one. --P64 (talk) 21:43, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

30 months ago I wrote at the top of this section, "Her is a transcript, incomplete and in progress. By 'in progress' I meant that I hoped to complete by reference to a legible print copy what I could not read online. Later I borrowed a hard copy from another library, and read it entirely, but forgot to complete this transcript of the endpaper.

Hint, hint.

P.S. There is no British issue of the "Revised and Updated Edition" catalogued by ISFDB [2]. Is there any British revised edition? and if so when whom? (Given lots of bibliographic data I will [try to] add a listing at ISFDB.) --P64 (talk) 03:57, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]