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Tuesday 24 June 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Brinton, Henry
(1901-1977) UK screenwriter and author, variously engaged in social and political work, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society; he also wrote detective novels as by Alex Fraser, and published several nonfiction books with Patrick Moore, Exploring Other Planets (1965) being of sf interest. His sf novel Purple-6 (1962) describes a very Near Future world in which the ...
Bedsheet
A term used erroneously to describe a Magazine format, ostensibly in contrast to Pulp and Digest. The size implied – sometimes called large pulp format – is the largest of the three; it varies slightly but approximates 11¾in x 8½in (298 x 216 mm) – i.e., close to A4 (297 x 210 mm). The term was given general currency when included by Richard 'Dick' ...
Nash, Henry
(? -? ) UK author who contributed stories to such journals as Blackwood's Magazine and The Graphic; Bare Rock; Or, the Island of Pearls (1891), a Lost Race tale for boys climaxing on an Island where non-whites, who enjoy a moderately advanced Technology, are governed by a queen who is white. [JC]
Afrikaans SF
Only four texts by writers of Afrikaans Speculative Fiction, strictly understood, had been translated into English as of 2024. The Afrikaans language, rooted in South Africa and spoken by descendants of Dutch, German, and French colonists, is one of that country's eleven official languages, recognized as such in 1925. European presence in South Africa reaches back to the mid-fifteenth century, intensifying in the mid-seventeenth century, when the ...
Traveller
Role Playing Game (1977). Game Designers' Workshop (GDW). Designed by Marc Miller. / Traveller is the most commercially successful science fiction Role Playing Game to date, as well as one of the first. The game was developed in an unusual way; after the publication of the initial rules and supplements, much additional work was done by other companies such as FASA and ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...