SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 16 September 2024
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.
Site updated on 16 September 2024
Sponsor of the day: Joe Haldeman
Mayo, W S
(1811-1895) US physician and author whose Kaloolah; Or, Journeyings to the Djébel Kumri: An Autobiography of Jonathan Romer (1849) [for vts see Checklist] may have taken its hoax-like, factoid-filled story – with Mayo himself posing as the editor of Romer's manuscript – from Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of A Gordon Pym, of Nantucket (1838), and its exotic Fantastic Voyage ...
Upload
This real-world term for the transfer of data to a remote Computer (for example, new or amended web pages to a website host) has taken on a special sf significance as denoting the copying or transfer of a human or other personality to a sentient software representation. Interesting early examples are "Ghost" (May 1943 Astounding) by Henry Kuttner and C L Moore, in which the ...
Malachronism
See the historical note at the end of this entry. / Without attempting a comprehensive Definition of SF, one may safely say that most sf stories and novels present an imaginary record of the human condition at some future time and, further, that the events recorded are usually of an epic dimension, either overtly or by implication. That is, that even when the protagonists are not of heroic stature they inhabit a landscape differing from our own ...
Spufford, Francis
(1964- ) UK academic and author, relatively little of whose work is explicitly sf, though his nonfiction is deeply conversant with science-fictional modes of thought. Though it takes the form of a memoir, The Child That Books Built (2002) is in fact constructed around readings of various writers including Ursula K Le Guin, C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien and ...
Hawthorne, Julian
(1846-1934) US author, journalist and anthologist, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, of whom he wrote a biography, and father of writer Hildegarde Hawthorne (1871-1952). Julian forever lived in the shadow of his father and never mustered even a fraction of Nathaniel's reputation; indeed he sullied the family name when he became inadvertently involved in a speculation fraud in 1908 which made others rich and put him in gaol for a few months in 1913. In a ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...