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Sunday 3 July 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.
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Hillgarth, Alan
(1899-1978) UK soldier, intelligence officer – rising in that capacity to Chief of British Naval Intelligence, Eastern Theatre – and author, whose fifth novel, The Black Mountain (1933), is a Near Future tale of revolution and politics in Bolivia, with a Lost Race element conveyed through the charismatic young protagonist's mysterious teacher, perhaps a Secret Master representing the long-hidden line of true Indian civilization in South America. [JC]
MacKinlay, Sterling
(1876-1952) UK author whose Near Future sf novel, Reparation (1928), is a contribution to the prolonged debate about the treatment of defeated Germany after World War One; reparations begin in 1993. [JC]
Smith, Sherwood
Pseudonym of US author Christine I Smith Lowentrout (1951- ), much of whose work has been fantasy, and much of her production under other pseudonyms, usually for the production of Ties. As Robyn Tallis, she wrote four Planet Builders Ties: Rebel from Alphorion (1989), Visions from the Sea (1989), Giants of Elenna (1989) and Fire in the Sky (1989); as Nicholas Adams, she wrote a Horror High tie, Final Curtain (1991); she has written under yet other names as well. The large ...
Rankin, Robert
(1949- ) UK author who began writing his highly idiosyncratic sf novels with the Brentford sequence beginning with The Antipope (1981), The Brentford Triangle (1983) and East of Ealing (1984), these three assembled as The Brentford Trilogy (omni 1988); the final volume in the sequence, Retromancer (2009), is a spoof Hitler Wins Alternate History tale, set in New York and London and featuring its protagonist's ultimately successful attempts to create a better world (ours). ...
Page, Norvell W
(1906-1961) US author who specialized between 1930 and 1943 in Hero/Villain Pulp adventure, much of his production being novel-length stories for The Spider, featuring the eponymous nascent Superhero, whose powers and Weapons – including a thin silk web used for climbing buildings – always press the envelope of the fantastic and sometimes pierce it, often aided by the Inventions of Professor Brownlee. The Spider sequence was created in competition with the somewhat more successful ...
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 ...