SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 22 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.
Site updated on 18 September 2023
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
Spy-Rays
Traditional item of sf Terminology for various surveillance mechanisms employing some kind of Ray that can penetrate most forms of matter, conferring the power of undetectable eavesdropping upon its operator. E E Smith uses the term throughout his Lensman series and seems to have coined it in the original magazine version of Triplanetary (January-April 1934 Amazing; ...
Dune [series]
The best-known sf sequence by Frank Herbert, whose opening novel Dune (December 1963-February 1964 Analog as "Dune World"; January-May 1965 Analog as "The Prophet of Dune"; fixup 1965) offers a heady mixture of desert Ecology – in particular the complex life cycle of the titular world's immense, devouring sandworms – galactic ...
Groc, Léon
(1882-1956) French author of many sf novels, of which only one, L'autobus évanoui (1914; trans Lawrence Shackelford Morris as The Bus That Vanished 1928), has been translated into English; it is a mystery novel involving an energy Ray which causes the eponymous vanishment. [JC]
Dellamonica, A M
(1968- ) Canadian author, married to Kelly Robson, who also writes as by L X Beckett (sometimes given as Lex Beckett), most of their earlier work being fantasy. They began to publish work of genre interest with "Lucre's Egg" in Crank! for Autumn 1994; A Key to the Illuminated Heretic (in Alternate Generals III (anth 2005) edited by Harry Turtledove; ...
Côté, Denis
(1954- ) Canadian author whose first two novels, marketed like their successors as juveniles, were Les Hockeyeurs cybernétiques (1983; trans lated by Jane Brierley as Shooting for the Stars 1990), a tale marked by a high degree of invention in its depiction of the adventures of the eponymous hockey player and a female journalist in Lost Ark, a Dystopia; further volumes in the Inactifs sequence ...
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 ...