SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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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Nuclear Energy
The claim that sf is a realistic, extrapolative literature is often supported by the citing of successful Predictions, among which atomic power and the atom bomb are usually given pride of place. When the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was released in 1945, John W Campbell Jr, editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, was exultant, claiming that now sf would have to be taken seriously. ...
Aguilera, Juan Miguel
(1960- ) Spanish illustrator, industrial designer by profession, and author. He is considered one of the best Spanish sf writers. He has published thirteen novels, half of them in collaboration with other authors; three novellas in collaboration; and fifteen or so short stories. His works convey like few others the sf Sense of Wonder. / His first story was "Sangrando correctamente" ["Bleeding Correctly"] ...
Forever Magazine
US sf and fantasy monthly Online Magazine, published in Ebook form and edited by Neil Clarke as a companion to Clarkesworld. It began in February 2015 and usually features a novella each issue supported by two short stories and, for the first fifteen issues, by an Interview with the author of the novella. Stories are selected from a ...
Block, Thomas H
(1945- ) US airline pilot and author who has written at least some of his aviation-based Technothrillers with Nelson DeMille as anonymous contributor, though the collaboration becomes explicit in the revised version of his first book, Mayday (1979; rev 1997 as by Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille). His tales all hover at the edge of genuine sf; of these, two are of particular ...
Wessells, Henry
(1960- ) US antiquarian bookseller, editor, small press publisher and author who began to publish sf outside the genre with "Virtual Wisdom" for Exquisite Corpse in 1992, a literary journal edited by Andrei Codrescu, and within the genre with "From This Swamp" in The Starry Wisdom (anth 1994) edited by D M Mitchell. In 1993, he encountered the work of Avram Davidson and began to compile bibliographical information ...
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 ...