SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 9 August 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 8 August 2022
Sponsor of the day: Dublin 2019 – An Irish Worldcon
Fowles, John
(1926-2005) UK author who remains perhaps most famous for his first and third novels, The Collector (1963) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). His second novel, The Magus (1965; rev 1977), especially in the conciser revised version, more powerfully explores the labyrinths of obsession and manipulation underlying, in all of Fowles's work, the rigmaroles and impostures of daylight reality. In this novel a series of seemingly supernatural contrivances separates the unpleasant protagonist ...
Argentina
In 1816, a few weeks before the declaration of Argentine independence, the country's first science fiction story, "Delirio" ["Delirium"], was published anonymously in the periodical La Prensa Argentina. This short story starts a broad tradition of science fiction in Argentine literature, with more than 50 published works in the nineteenth century. The most outstanding works of that century belong to the doctor and naturalist Edward L Holmberg (1852-1937), among them Viaje maravilloso del ...
Adeler, Max
Principal pseudonym of US author and businessman Charles Heber Clark (1841-1915), who wrote also as John Quill, under which name he published "The Women's Millennium" (26 April 1867 Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin), possibly the first sex-role-reversal Dystopia. Set in an indeterminate future, and told from the perspective of an even later period when some balance has been achieved, it is a remarkably cutting demonstration of the foolishness of male claims to natural superiority. Adeler's ...
Blue Book Magazine, The
US general fiction Pulp magazine which ran for 613 monthly issues from May 1905 to May 1956. It began as The Monthly Story Magazine, became The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine in September 1906, The Blue Book Magazine in May 1907, and finally Bluebook in February 1952. By the 1930s it was regarded as the "King of the Pulps" and one of the big three, alongside Argosy and Adventure. It published more science fiction than either of those titles and was a close rival to The All-Story in the ...
Beyer, William Gray
(? -? ) US policeman and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Let 'Em Eat Space" as by William Grey Beyer in Argosy for 4 November 1930. Most of his sf first appeared in the same magazine, with the exception of a 1951 story in Science Fiction Quarterly bylined Wm Gray Beyer. His Minions of the Moon (22 April-6 May 1939 Argosy; 1950), along with three further serials, Minions of Mars (13 January-10 February 1940 Argosy; 1940), "Minions of ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...