SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 15 May 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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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
O'Donnell, Kevin, Jr
(1950-2012) US author with a BA in Chinese Studies who spent several years in the Far East. His first published sf was "The Hand Is Quicker" (October 1973 Analog), and over fifty short stories followed before the turn of the century. His first novel, Bander Snatch (1979), curiously blends pulp Clichés and real inventiveness in its tale of a ghetto mobster who has telepathic powers and learns to use them ...
About Time
UK film (2013). Universal Pictures. Written and directed by Richard Curtis. Cast includes Lindsay Duncan, Domhnall Gleeson, Tom Hollander, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy and Margot Robbie. 123 minutes. Color. / Shortly after his twenty-first birthday, Tim (Gleeson) is told by his father (Nighy) that the men in their family have the ability to Time Travel within the limits of their own past. Tim uses this knowledge to win the affections of Mary (McAdams), ...
Borders, Joe H
(1858-1930) US newspaper owner from Eastern Kentucky and author of The Queen of Appalachia (1901), a Lost Race novel set unusually in the eastern USA, where a civilization made up of descendants of early American pioneers has established an arcadian, monarchical Utopia supported by advanced Technology. [JC]
Chambless, Edgar
(1870-1936) US visionary and author whose Utopia, Roadtown (1910), promulgates a radically modernizing concept for the City as a literal embodiment of the centrality of Transportation: "a line of city ... projected through the country ... in the form of a continuous house. In the basement ... are to be placed means of transporting passengers, freights, parcels and all utilities...." This ...
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 ...