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Monday 15 August 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 15 August 2022
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Tolstaya, Tatyana
(1951- ) Russian broadcaster, journalist and author, grand-daughter of Alexei Tolstoy; she should not be confused with Tatyana Sukhotina-Tolstaya (1864-1950), daughter of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910); Tolstaya herself is Leo's great-grandniece. She is of sf interest for her first novel, Kys' (2000; trans Jamey Gambrell as The Slynx 2003), a fantasticated Utopia set in a Ruined Earth Russia 200 years hence, where Mutants are savagely oppressed, a nearly insane dictator rules ...
Thiaudière, Edmond
(1837-1930) French philosopher and author, active from before 1860, most of his work being nonfiction. His sf includes La Dernière Bataille: épopée prophétique de l'année 1909 ["The Last Battle: Prophetic Epic of the Year 1909"] (1873 chap) as by Frederic Stampf, a Future War tale climaxing in the creation of a unified socialist Europe; and the three speculations about experimental Psychology assembled as Trois Amours Singulières (coll 1886; trans Brian ...
Sasamoto Yūichi
(1963- ) Japanese author of light-hearted, occasionally bawdy Space Operas much-loved in Japanese Fandom; regarded alongside Motoko Arai as a pioneer in the serialized Young Adult chapbook format known in Japan as Light Novels. He has remained prominent, in part because of canny publishers that periodically rebrand his work with newer imagery; his debut work Yōsei Sakusen ["Fairy War"] (1984 4vols) first appeared as four separately published novellas, but has twice ...
Sociology
Sociology is the systematic study of society and social relationships. The word was coined by Auguste Comte (1798-1857) in the mid-nineteenth century, and it was then that the first attempts were made to divorce studies of society employing the scientific method, on the one hand, from dogmatic political and ethical presuppositions, on the other. Social studies in a more general sense have, of course, a much longer history, going back to Plato. Sociology and sf have a common precursor in Utopian ...
Europe
Swedish rock band, formed in Stockholm in 1979, whose surprisingly enjoyable and sometimes inadvertently comical stadium rock, whilst mostly articulating predictable heavy-metal sentiments, occasionally addresses sf topics. Their first release Europe (1983), for instance, included the egregiously-titled "In the Future to Come" which warns rather incoherently of impending doom ("But one day or another / This world would maybe / Be destroyed forever / A holocaust could maybe be spread"). The ...
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 ...