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Friday 18 April 2025
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 14 April 2025
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Time Abyss
The first recognition of deep Time – the realization of truly awesome timescales – may plausibly be dated to the effective invention of geology by James Hutton (1726-1797), whose intuition that the rocks of our planet "show no vestige of a beginning" inspired in his biographer John Playfair (1748-1819) the response that, on being faced with this insight, "The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time." Certainly deep time is one of ...
Dodderidge, Esmé
(1916-1997) UK author whose The New Gulliver, or The Adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, Jr. in Capovolta (1979) brings its protagonist into a matriarchal society, a Dystopia as far as its male visitor can see at first, in which by an ironic role reversal all the men, who are subservient to women, carry out the child-rearing and sexual-object functions which in the real Western world at the time the book was written were generally the roles of women. ...
Smith, Robert Charles
(1938- ) UK author, prolific in various genres under several pseudonyms, including Roger C Brandon, Robert Charles and Charles Leader. A Clash of Hawks (1975) as Robert Charles depicts a Near Future conflict between Israel and the Arab world; Flowers of Evil (1981) as by Robert Charles is horror; and Nightworld (1984; vt The Comet 1985), also as by Charles, is an expertly told but ...
Space Adventures [comic]
US Comic (1952-1964, 1967). Charlton Comics. 59 issues (numbered #1-#21, #23-#60; #22 was not issued). Artists include Jon D'Agostino, Steve Ditko, Dick Giordano, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio and Bill Molno. Most of the scripts were by Joe Gill. Usually 4-6 sf comic strips per issue and a two page text short-story (plus occasional one-page non-fiction strips). #60 was ...
Bax, Martin
(1933-2024) UK doctor of medicine, publisher, editor and author. His life can be separated into two careers. As an innovative paediatrician, he was a significant figure within the National Health Service of Great Britain, authoring medical texts and editing from 1978 until 2003 the journal Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology. As a literary figure, he was co-founder in 1959 and long-time editor (until his retirement in 2013) of the literary magazine Ambit, for which J G ...
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 ...