SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 29 June 2022
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 27 June 2022
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
Martin, Peter
(? - ) A name long thought to have been the working name of UK author Peter Martin Leckie; but members of Leckie's family have stated that Peter Martin Leckie was not this Peter Martin. The name was used for the sf novel, Summer in Three Thousand: Not a Prophecy – A Parable (1946), in which a progressive Utopian World Island state is contrasted with a war-torn conservative Dystopian one. [JC]
Rexner, Romulus
Pseudonym of US author born Andrezej Mariusz Toporski (1920-2009); he legally changed his name to Marion Matarisvan in 1956. In his sf novel, Planetary Legion: A Story of War and Peace, 1940-1980 (1960; rev vt Planetary Legion for Peace: Story of their War and our Peace, 1940-2000 1987), progressive forces successfully manipulate the Near Future world into a state of Utopia; it is heartfelt. There have been several editions, all of which almost certainly differ; two are listed below. [JC]
Lach-Szyrma, W S
(1841-1915) UK Anglican clergyman and author, son of the Polish philosopher and soldier Krystyn Lach Szyrma (1790-1866), who had come to the UK in 1832; Lach-Szyrma (he hyphenated his surname) began writing his series of interplanetary fictions (see Planetary Romance), featuring the travels around the solar system of the winged Venusian Aleriel, in untraced magazine pieces published around 1865; in more clearly fictional form, this material was incorporated into A Voice from Another World (1874 ...
Enjoe Toh
(1972- ) Pen-name and preferred romanization of an unidentified Japanese author, a former physicist and postgraduate mathematician whose literary experiments have made him a liminal figure between Japan's sf community and the rarefied discourses of literary awards (see Postmodernism and SF). Such straddling of categories began with his debut works, of which his first published story was the surreal "Of the Baseball" (June 2007 Bungaku-kai), although he had previously ...
Wells, Robert
(1929- ) UK author who began publishing sf with "The Machine That Was Lovely" in the Observer in 1954, and who later concentrated on novels, beginning with The Parasaurians (1969), in which fake safaris against Robot Dinosaurs turn into a more serious threat to the hero – an early appearance in the SF Megatext of a pattern of story central to Michael Crichtons Jurassic Park sequence from 1990 on. Candle in the Sun (1971) explores a Last Man scenario through the ...
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 November 1966, where much of his earlier criticism also appeared. This criticism, despite some studiously ...