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Thursday 28 September 2023
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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Shadowrun
Role Playing Game (1989). FASA. Designed by Bob Charrette, Tom Dowd, Paul Hume. / The setting for Shadowrun is a curious Science and Sorcery fusion of high Fantasy and Cyberpunk, an innovation which greatly appealed to many players but has resulted in adverse comments on its aesthetics from, amongst ...
Toombs, Alfred
(1912-1986) US author in whose Good as Gold (1955), a Satire set in Near Future Washington, District of Columbia, the Transmutation of gold, reversing the traditional alchemical process, produces shit. [JC]
Bergonzi, Bernard
(1929-2016) UK literary academic, critic and poet, latterly Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Warwick, who began to publish essays of genre interest with "The Publication of The Time Machine, 1894-1895" (February 1960 Review of English Studies) and "The Time Machine: An Ironic Myth" (December 1960 Critical Quarterly). His many nonfiction works include a useful examination of the sf or Scientific Romances of H G ...
Dasgupta, Rana
(1971- ) UK-born author now resident in India whose first book, Tokyo Cancelled (coll of linked stories 2005), presents a series of Club Story tales told by thirteen passengers stranded overnight in an airport because snow has forced the cancellation of their flight to Tokyo. The tales themselves – as befit narratives told by displaced citizens of the contemporary world – are exceedingly various, running from ...
Tolan, Stephanie S
(1942- ) US author, almost exclusively of fiction for younger children and Young Adults. In a prolific career she has written relatively little sf. After a supernatural fantasy, Who's There? (1994), she began the Ark Trilogy, comprising to date Welcome to the Ark (1996) and Flight of the Raven (2001), initially set in an isolated Keep known as the "Ark", whose ...
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 consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...