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Sunday 13 July 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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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Edisonade
Daedalus was the first inventor hero, but he was also a bureaucrat; and when he built the Labyrinth he did so as a wage-slave or sharecropper, on hire to the king. For that reason the headword for this entry, which is about the creation of an American dream of freelance heroism, has not been formed from his name. As used here the term "edisonade" or "Edisonade" – which is derived from Thomas Alva Edison in the same way ...
Toledano Redondo, Juan Carlos
(1971- ) Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo was born in Adra, Spain. He completed a BA at the Universidad de Granada in Spanish Philology and a PhD in Romance Languages at the University of Miami, Florida. He is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon, and works on the fantastic in Spanish-language contemporary narrative. / Toledano has dedicated most of his research life to investigating the relationship between the Castro ...
Swan, Christopher
(1946- ) US author whose Near Future tale of redemptive Ecology, YV88 (1977) with Chet Roaman, describes the transformation of the eponymous Yosemite Valley National Park by 1988 into an enclave no longer savaged by roads, rampant tourism, exploitation. A light railroad system replaces cars; the environmentally destructive O'Shaughnessy Dam. The vision was attractive, but as advocacy the book failed ...
Beeton, Samuel Orchart
(1831-1877) UK publisher, editor and author, married from 1856 to Isabella Mary Mason (1836-1865), with whom he produced Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861), the book for which they remain best remembered. Beeton began his career as a publisher with Charles H Clarke in 1852, as C H Clarke & Co; at Beeton's instigation, they came out with the first English edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), which both brought the ...
Chayefsky, Paddy
Working name of US playwright and author Sidney Aaron Chayefsky (1923-1981), most famous for his work as a Television dramatist; Marty (produced 1953) marks for many a culmination (and a sign of the passing) of the Golden Age of US television drama. The Tenth Man (first performed 1959; 1960) is a Dybbuk fantasy based on The Dybbuk (1920) by S Ansky (1863-1920), which revolves around an exorcism that serves as a revealing mirror ...
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 ...