Armed with the required five master's degrees, among other outstanding accomplishments, the members of the elite Practical Philosopher Corps are a handful of galactictic roamers trained to detect life on the hundreds of newly colonized planets. The PP Corps members wander the universe looking for habitable planets for humanity - but first searching thoroughly for native intelligent life, in which case humanity must give that planet a pass. Set in the 21st century, Conscience Odegaard travels from world to world, crisis to crisis, resolving problems that others cannot.

Future and Fantastic Worlds embodies an unusual approach to the field of bibliographic research, including over 700 annotations of every DAW book published through mid-1987, with indexes by author, artist, and title, providing a massive guide to modern SF writers and their works, with much background data. Interspersed throughout the book are numerous wry, irreverent, and amusing observations offered by the late and highly respected researcher in this extremely valuable genre tool.

For more than 50 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. Strokes is a collection of reviews from a wide variety of sources - including Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly - about the most significant literatures of the twenty-first century: science fiction, fantasy and horror: the literatures Clute argues should be recognized as the central modes of fantastika in our times. It covers the period between 1966 and 1986.

Allen Odegaard is a member of the Practical Philosopher Corps, a handful of galactic roamers trained to detect intelligent life-forms on the hundreds of newly colonized planets.