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Friday 22 September 2023
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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Garland
Garland Publishing, Inc, New York, was a US specialist publisher of a wide range of reference works and facsimile reprints, founded in 1969 by Gavin Borden (1939-1991), and active in its own right until the end of the century; only some of the Garland list related to sf, beginning in 1975 with the Garland Library of Science Fiction: 45 titles, selected by Lester del Rey, each novel issued separately in durable editions. The series was criticized, partly ...
Hollow Earth
The concept of the Earth as a hollow, spherical shell with a habitable, internal concave surface accessible through polar openings or caves, or by mechanical bores, has long been a significant motif in sf. The idea's dual origins, from Religion and Pseudoscience, are still potent. Traditionally Hell was sited inside the Earth, a notion that persisted at least until the eighteenth century, when a theologian proposed that Earth's ...
Stokes, Manning Lee
(1911-1976) US author whose work of sf interest was confined to pseudonymous contributions under House Names to various series. As Nick Carter, he wrote The Red Rays (1969) in the Nick Carter series; as Jeffrey Lord he wrote books 1 to 8 of the Richard Blade series: The Bronze Axe (1969), The Jade Warrior (1969), Jewel of Tharn ...
Poe, Edgar Allan
(1809-1849) US poet, critic and author, born Edgar Poe; he normally wrote as Edgar A Poe, not as Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps because of bad blood between him and his foster father John Allan, whose name he never adopted legally. He was a major figure in American literature, a pioneer in the creation of the short story as a form, and as such the effective creator or significant innovator in the detective story, the horror story, and sf. His career focus on magazine work (just before magazines ...
Beresford, Leslie
Principal pseudonym – adopted circa 1910 – of UK author Charles Beresford Painter (1878-1946), who has been inaccurately listed as having published "A Story of Horseshoes" for Short Stories (week ending 12 March 1898) as by Pan – but who in fact began his publishing career with The Second Rising: A Romance of India (1910), a Future War novel about the Second Indian Mutiny. Two Utopian ...
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. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began publishing sf reviews in 1964 and sf proper with "A Man Must Die" in New Worlds for ...