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Monday 27 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.
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Bok, Hannes
Pseudonym of US illustrator, author, and astrologer Wayne Francis Woodard (1914-1964). Sf Illustration has had very few mavericks: Bok was possibly the most famous. He did not let editors and publishers dictate the way he designed his work, and thereby lost hundreds of commissions. As Brian W Aldiss notes in Science Fiction Art (1975), he was one of the field's "masters of the macabre", a stylist par excellence. He painted many covers and did hundreds of black-and-white illustrations for such ...
Fraser, Ronald
(1888-1974) UK soldier, civil servant and author, in active service during World War One until an injury left him permanently disabled. Most of his work, like his first novel, The Flying Draper (1924; rev 1931), utilizes fantasy or sf devices – in this initial case levitation (see Telekinesis) – to create allegorical or philosophical arguments, unmistakably influenced by H G Wells: the draper in this first novel, for instance, finds that the ability to fly enforces almost literally ...
Hurwood, Bernhardt J
(1926-1987) US author of various sorts including detections and a very early manual on adjusting to the Computer age: Writing Becomes Electronic: Successful Authors Tell How They Write in the Age of the Computer (1986). He wrote and edited occult and horror titles for the Young Adult market, like Strange Curses (coll 1975) and By Blood Alone (1979); the Man from T.O.M.C.A.T. soft-porn quasithriller sequence as by Mallory T Knight, beginning with The Man from T.O.M.C.A.T. #1: The Dozen Deadly ...
Antieau, Kim
(1955- ) US author who began publishing fiction of genre interest with "Out of the Womb" for Asimov's in July 1983; her work brings together Feminist and Ecological concerns in tales, set generally in the American West, which themselves weave together fantasy and sf procedures (see Equipoise). The effect is heightened, sometimes over-emotional, politically engaged – Counting on Wildflowers: An Entanglement (coll 2005) is an impassioned meditation on the Condition of ...
Hérault, Paul-Jean
Pseudonym of French journalist and author Michel Rigaud (1934-2020), perhaps best known in France for his Cal de Ter sequence of Space Operas beginning with Le Rescapé de la Terre ["The Survivor of Earth"] (1975). Les Clones Deviants ["The Clone Deviants"] (2005; trans Michael Shreve as The Clone Rebellion 2015) is set in a Galactic Empire universe, with great armies of Clones clashing in interstellar space; their realization that they have been engineered to die uselessly leads to their ...
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 ...