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Friday 10 July 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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 7 July 2026
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Nelson, Arthur A
(1875-1917) US salesman, advertising manager (of the Royal Typewriter Company) and author of some Pulp-magazine fiction; born Alfred Arthur Nelson, he reversed his given names for his writing work. He is of greatest sf interest for his Lost Race novel, Wings of Danger (January-April 1915 Adventure as "The Adventurers"; 1915), featuring an ancient Norse land called Valkyria within a ...
Silicon Dreams
Videogame series (from 1983). Level 9 Computing (L9). / The Silicon Dreams trilogy is a series of text-based science fiction Adventures. The first game, Snowball (1983 L9, Atari8, C64, Spectrum; 1984 Amstrad, MSX) designed by Mike Austin, Nick Austin, Pete Austin, is set aboard a slower than light colony starship (the "Snowball 9") approaching its destination in the solar system of 40 Eridani A. The ship ...
Wise, Clement
(? -? ) UK author of a very mildly fictionalized Utopia, Darkness and Dawn (1884) anonymous, which argues for universal state ownership of all goods, on a Christian basis; the descriptions of working conditions in factories is powerful. [JC]
Rankin-Gee, Rosa
(1986- ) UK editor and author, resident in France. Her first novel, the Young Adult Last Kings of Sark (2013), is a nonfantastic coming-of-age tale whose setting on Sark achieves an intensity close to the fantastic. Dreamland (2021) is placed in a Near Future Britain, partially submerged due to the consequences of Climate Change. The young ...
Trudno byt' bogom
1. Film (1989; vt Hard To Be a God). Dovzhenko Studio/Halleluya Film GMBH/VO Sovexportfilm. Directed by Peter Fleischmann. Written by Fleischmann, Jean-Claude Carriere, Dal Orlov, based on Trudno byt' bogom (1964; trans as Hard to be a God 1973) by Arkady and Boris Strugatski. Cast includes Andrei Boltnev, Edward Dzentara, Alexander Filippenko, Ann Gautier, Mikhail Gluzsky, Werner Herzog and Christina ...
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 ...