Willis E. McNelly

Willis Everett McNelly was a professor and writer best known for The Dune Encyclopedia, the 1984 companion to Frank Herbert's classic Dune series of science fiction novels.

The son of an avid science fiction reader of the same name, McNelly grew up immersed in science fiction, which he later preferred to call "speculative fiction". Securing a doctorate in English literature from Northwestern University, McNelly later edited the first university-level textbooks on science fiction as literature in the mid-1960s, in particular Above the Human Landscape and Mars, We Love You, co-edited with his fellow teacher, Jane Hipolito.

McNelly died of cancer on April 7, 2003, at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, California.

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