Aliens, Robots, and Spaceships

Rating:
Summary: lacks focus, but otherwise lives up to its predecessors
Review: This is Jeff Rovin's fifth encyclopedic book to discuss various characters from the wide range of American and, to a (quite) lesser extent, international popular culture, and I'm afraid that, as he chooses classifications of greater and greater range, he continually loses focus; he does well with what he offers us, as always, but his selection process seems to progressively dim. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SUPER-HEROES was forced to restrict some interesting international and golden age characters to brief appendices, while ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SUPER-VILLAINS could have been more all-encompassing as it picked and chose characters from throughout the century (understandable, there being so many more super-villains than super-heroes, after all); there are even more monsters, but ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MONSTERS did what it could, as did ADVENTURE HEROES, which covered a category somewhat harder to define than the preceding three. But with ALIENS ROBOTS AND SPACESHIPS, I'm afraid Mr. Rovin got too ambitious. By trying to encompass all sources, he devoted but sparse attention to most of them. Each of this book's three categories could have easily supported books of their own, especially given Mr. Rovin's habit of including various one-shot characters that have captured his interest; a book could be done on the aliens from magazines like AMAZING STORIES alone, ditto the robots in 1950s comic books or spaceships in science fiction movies. Other problems include flawed adherence to the title's restrictions (The book's not ALIENS ROBOTS SPACESHIPS TIME MACHINES PLANETS AND SO ON, after all), and repetitions from previous books (Superman is a super-hero first, and an alien second; he didn't need to be in this book.). Don't get me wrong; this book is interesting reading and a good reference book of its kind, but it doesn't quite live up to Mr. Rovin's previous efforts. He tried for too much and fell a bit short this time.