SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 10 December 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 9 December 2022
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Twilight Imperium
Board Game (1997). Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). Designed by Christian Petersen. / Twilight Imperium is a complex game of galactic conquest, scientific development, economic management, colonization and trade, played on a two-dimensional map with miniature models. The setting is a somewhat generic Space Opera in which a Galactic Empire ruled by a benevolent but arrogant race has ...
Superheroes
Superhero fiction is a genre based on many early models, but which crystallized in Comics; since then it has infiltrated the Cinema, Radio, Television and books. Stories involving figures with super (or at the least extraordinary) powers, and whose actions tend to keep the world safe, almost certainly existed, in some form, before Alexandre Dumas ...
Pink Floyd
Prodigiously successful and influential UK supergroup, founded in the mid 1960s by bassist Roger Waters (1943- ), drummer Nick Mason (1944- ), keyboard player Rick Wright (1943-2008) and eccentric singer-guitarist Syd Barrett (1946-2006). This first incarnation of the band (identified by fans as "The Syd Barrett years") was characterized by a series of notable psychedelic and often drug-influenced live performances, mostly jazz-influenced rock ...
Chamberlain, Henry Richardson
(1859-1911) US author and newspaper editor of considerable political sophistication, London correspondent for The New York Sun from 1892 until his death; he predicted (correctly) that some kind of Balkan conflict would soon ignite a world war. His acumen also shows itself in his Near Future sf novel, 6,000 Tons of Gold (1894): the protagonist – after gaining a huge hoard of gold from Patagonia – attempts to reform society by ...
Fuqua, Robert
Main working name used by US illustrator Joseph Wirt Tillotson (1905-1959); others included R Fuqua, Fuqua, Joe Tillotson, Joe W Tillotson, Joe Wirt Tillotson, Joseph W Tillotson and his full name, Joseph Wirt Tillotson. He received his formal art education at the Art Institute of Chicago, then went into advertising in that city; to supplement his income he took on freelance Illustration commissions, signing these "Robert Fuqua" – his maternal ...
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 ...