This book has been called a work unique inside the international outline of the reference titles on the fantastic. This fact of course was very flettering for us, especially considering that in English there are several books dedicated to immaginary heroes, starting with the ones written by Jeff Rovin. Perhaps, according to our point of view, the most peculiar aspect of our work is the reunion in a single book of many hundreds protagonists taken from the movies and the comics, literature and television, from science fiction and horror, from fantasy and the fantastic in the general, while usuallly reference as this one are more specific. So, in our work, you can find side to side Batman and Conan the Barbarian, Peter Pan and King Kong, Superman and Gandalf the Grey, Frankenstein and Johnny Mnemonic, agent Dana Scully and space captain Cirocco Jones, Dylan Dog (a famous Italian comics character) and Doctor Mabuse, space ambassador Retieff and space agent Dominic Flandry, Alice and Zira (from the Planet of the Apes movie series).
Another different point of view used into the Dizionario is the
focus on single characters, not on a larger genre (as it is usual for this
kind of reference books). So, into the Dizionario there are Dracula
and Lestat, not a general voice on the Vampires; there are King Kong, Godzilla
and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, not a voice on Prehistoric Monsters;
there are Doctor Victor von Frankenstein and Morbius, not Mad Scientists;
the Dizionario talks about Robby, Proteus IV and Hal 9000, not about generic
Computers or Robots. You will find the heroes who made science fiction,
fantasy and horror, not the generic categories to which these heroes pertain.
Two were the criteria chosen for the composition of this massive volume:
the character should be multi-medial or serialized. So in our Dizionario
you can find all the protagonists who has been in more than one novel or
movies, and all the characters that in their fictional life has moved from
literature to cinema, or from the comics to the screen (and all other possible
combinations). We have taken characters usually considered belonging to
science fiction, fantasy or horror more than other belonging to the fantastic
in general or the modern fairie tale , and we have covered a temporal arc
starting since Gulliver (eighteen century) to September 1996. So in the
Dizionario there are more than a thousand lemmas, principal and secondary
(the latter are reference marks to less important characters in a series),
where we talk about a character according to the media in which he appears
(cinema and tv, comics or literature , role playing games and even songs),
pointing out also sequels, tv movies, traspositions, citations. The book,
of big size, has also an author index and a title index (essential for
who doesn't know the name of a character) and other appendices. There are
also more than a hundred B/W drawings and 32 pages of B/W photos. Our work
has been critically well received in Italy, as you can see from the reviews
here collected. We hope to receive the grant, in the near future, from
our editor (who deteins the copyrights) to put online a part of this work.
For the moment, on another page of this site are avalaible new characters
(not present on the Dizionario).
Reviews («») and citations ("") (in Italian only) :
- «Così fantastico che è quasi normale» (Paolo
Mauri, la Repubblica, 2 dicembre 1996)
- «Il libro del mese» ([Roberto Chiavini], Bilbo News
n. 2, dicembre 1997)
- «Eroi universali per sognatori» (Giancarlo Granziero,
Il
Gazzettino di Venezia, 23 dicembre 1996)
- «Tu chiamali se vuoi immaginari» (Guido Gerosa, La
Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 11 gen. 1997)
- "Da leggere" (Domenica Quiz n. 4, 23 gennaio 1997)
- «Dizionario
Gremese dei personaggi fantastici» (Franco Forte, Delos SF
n. 23, febbraio 1997)
- «Dizionario Gremese dei personaggi fantastici» (Ermanno
Comuzio, Cineforum n. 361, feb. 1997)
- «Dizionario Gremese dei personaggi fantastici» (Andrea
Angiolino, Kaos n. 43, febbraio 1997)
- «Dizionario Gremese dei personaggi fantastici» (Franco
Forte, Avvenimenti, 19 febbraio 1997)
- "Che cosa c'è di nuovo" (Maurizio Porro, Il Corriere della
Sera, 9 marzo 1997)
- «Dizionario dei personaggi fantastici» (Palinuro [Giuseppe
Lippi?], Urania n. 1307, 13 apr. 1997)
- «Fra gli altri libri... » ([Selene Ballerini],
Il
Giornale dei Misteri n. 305, aprile 97)
- «Dizionario dei personaggi fantastici» (Stefano Trucco,
Andersen
n. 129, maggio 1997)
- «Star Trek sull'Arno» (Alfredo Scansani, La Nazione,
31 agosto 1997)
- "Settecento eroi dell'immaginario" (Ciak n. 157)
- "E intanto in Italia... " ([Pietro Guarriello?], Yorick)
- "Cinema
da leggere" (Francesco Troiano, 84 Charing Cross Road, s.d.)
Go to the index of Imaginary Heroes (in Italian only)
Back to SF PLUS Write to the Translator R. Chiavini