SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 January 2025
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 13 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: Stuart Hopen
Rand, Peter
(1942- ) US author of The Time of the Emergency (1977), an sf novel set in a world subsequent to a nuclear Holocaust – but how much farther into the future it is hard to distinguish – so that the abstract desert and surreal hotel that provide a stage for the four protagonists' shattered behaviour may in fact be described as inhabiting a Ruined Earth. [JC]
Sorcerers, The
Film (1967). Tigon Film Distributors (UK)/Allied Artists Pictures (US). Produced by Patrick Curtis and Tony Tenser. Directed by Michael Reeves. Written by Reeves and Tom Baker from an idea by John Burke (see Jonathan Burke). Cast includes Boris Karloff, Catherine Lacey and Ian Ogilvy. 86 minutes. Colour. / Former medical hypnotist Professor Marcus Monserrat (Karloff), disgraced by an unexplained incident some years ...
Inklings, The
Oxford University-based reading circle and discussion group, active from the early 1930s to 1949, which encouraged the writing of Fantasy. Its best known members are C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien and Charles Williams; others with entries in this encyclopedia are Owen Barfield and Roger Lancelyn ...
Kensett, Percy F
(1868-1940) UK author of The Amulet of Tarv: A Romance of the South Downs, 1,000 BC (1925), a Prehistoric SF tale whose present-day protagonists are given access via Time Viewer to the era in question; they are then able to establish Communications with the past. [JC]
Stead, Robert J C
(1880-1959) Canadian poet and author, best known for the nonfantastic novel Grain (1926). Of some sf interest are Dennison Grant: A Novel of To-Day (1920), in which the unpacking of a Utopian land settlement scheme infers a movement into the Near Future; and The Copper Disc (1931) features a Mad Scientist who plans to rule the world through the powers contained ...
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 ...