SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 29 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 25 September 2023
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Tesla, Nikola
(1856-1943) Croatian-born (though of Serbian origin) inventor, engineer and futurist, in the US from 1884, where he was immediately hired by Thomas Alva Edison for the Edison Machine Works. The association with Edison would benefit and plague both men for the rest of their lives: Edison the pragmatic (and sometimes unscrupulous) inventor as entrepreneur; Tesla the visionary (and sometimes nearly demented) inventor as ...
Who, The
Highly regarded UK rock band, formed in 1964 by guitarist and songwriter Peter Townshend (1945- ), vocalist Roger Daltrey (1944- ), bassist John Entwhistle (1944-2002) and drummer Keith Moon (1946-1978). The Who's blues and rock grounding is evident in a range of skilfully noisy and slyly affecting songs about teenage disaffection, some of the most enduring in the rock-and-roll canon. But Townshend's ambition from an early stage was to write ...
Langford, George
(1876-1964) US industrialist, amateur palaeontologist and author of several Prehistoric SF tales for juvenile readers (see Children's SF), beginning with the two Pic the Weapon-Maker tales, Pic the Weapon-Maker (1920) and Kutnar, Son of Pic (1921), set 25,000 years ago and featuring what may be Telepathic rapport with mammoths; ...
Memory
The most dramatic fictional quirks of human memory are its loss or external manipulation, as discussed in the entries for Amnesia and Memory Edit (see also Dream Hacking). Also of occasional sf interest is the phenomenon of photographic or eidetic memory, sometimes treated as a minor Superpower. Among the best-known examples are: the eponym of Jorge Luis ...
Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award
Sf/fantasy/horror Award which honours the best first novel of the year, as voted by members of the US Baltimore area's annual Convention, Balticon. It is named for Compton Crook (1908-1981), who published sf as Stephen Tall. The award was first presented in 1983 for work first published in 1982. An additional prize of, currently, $1000 goes to the winner. [DRL] Winners 1983: Donald ...
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 consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...