SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 16 February 2025
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 11 February 2025
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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Dwyer, James Francis
(1874-1952) Australian author, imprisoned for committing forgery (1899-1902), in the US after 1907, in France after 1921; a prolific author of stories from 1902, sometimes as by Burglar Bill with the Sydney Bulletin, where he began publishing a huge stream of works; he eventually moved on as well to a wide range of magazines like Black Cat, Blue Book and Argosy. "The Phantom ...
Mighels, Ella Sterling
(1853-1934) US author, almost all of whose work, fiction and nonfiction, deals with her native California; she was married to Philip Verrill Mighels. Her short Lost Race novel, Fairy Tale of the White Man: Told from the Gates of Sunset (1915 chap), sites the origin of the White Man in her home state, and describes a complex ancient urban civilization in glowing terms. [JC]
Playboy
US Slick men's magazine published by HMH Publications, Chicago, under Hugh M Hefner, monthly from December 1953 (first issue undated), until 2009, which saw only 11 issues; ten issues per year from 2012 to 2016 and bimonthly from January/February 2017. Letter size and saddle-stapled to allow opening flat for the centrefold. Despite the obvious fantasies that Playboy offered, Hefner also wanted the magazine to provide intellectual and commercial stimulation, ...
Badham, John
(1939- ) US film-maker who showed a penchant for sf as far back as his early television work on Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1970-1972), for which he directed adaptations of stories by Basil Copper ("Camera Obscura") and Fritz Leiber ("The Girl with the Hungry Eyes"). For the portmanteau television film Three Faces of Love he directed Kurt ...
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 ...