SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 23 May 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 20 May 2022
Sponsor of the day: Li Zhaoxin
Terraforming
If the Colonization of Other Worlds is not to be restricted to those that prove almost-exact duplicates of the Earth, some form of adaptation will be necessary; the colonists might adapt themselves by Genetic Engineering, as in James Blish's Pantropy series, or cyborgization (see Cyborgs), as in Frederik Pohl's Man Plus (1976), but if they are bolder they might instead adapt the worlds, by terraforming them. The verb "terraform" was coined by Jack Williamson in "Collision Orbit" (July 1942 ...
Future Science Fiction Digest
US professional Digest magazine, also available in ebook form, published by UFO Publishing, Brooklyn, New York, and edited by Alex Shvartsman. There was an advance issue #0 dated May 2018 which was all-reprint, but from December 2018 it became a regular quarterly magazine devoted primarily to international sf, either reprinted and translated from non-US sources or stories drawing upon the cultures of other countries. Shvartsman had reached an agreement with the Chinese publisher Future Affairs ...
Knight, Damon
(1922-2002) US author and editor; his third marriage was to Kate Wilhelm. Like many sf writers, Knight became involved in sf Fandom at an early age, and by 1941 was a member of the Futurians in New York, where he shared an apartment with Robert A W Lowndes and met James Blish, C M Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl and others. (In The Futurians: The Story of the Science Fiction "Family" of the 30's that Produced Today's Top SF Writers and Editors [1977] he published a candid history of the group and its ...
Dunn, J Allan
(1872-1941) UK-born traveller, editor and author, in USA from 1893, most prolific as an author of Westerns, more than half of his output of at least 1000 stories being in that category; before about 1913, he normally wrote as Allan Dunn. He also wrote as by Joseph Montague. Of sf interest are The Flower of Fate (1928), in which a Lost Race of Lemurians is discovered on an Island in the South Pacific; and The Treasure of Atlantis (December 1916 All-Around; 1970), in which Atlantis, which has ...
McLaren, Jack
(1884-1954) Australian author, in UK in later life, prolific in various genres, specializing in adventure tales, some of them exotic. Of direct sf interest is The Devil of the Depths: A Strange Story of the South Seas (1935), whose protagonist encounters a number of challenges Under the Sea and on a mysterious South Pacific Island, including Monsters, sentient flora, and the ruins of a Lost Race village. [JC]
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 ...