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Tuesday 11 November 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.
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Bowen, Robert Sidney
(1900-1977) US aviator, journalist, editor; his middle name is spelled Sydney, but is given as Sidney in his books; he also wrote nonfantastic tales as James Robert Richard. He served during World War One, in 1917 as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service, and from 1918 in active service as a pilot. After the war he worked for the London Daily News, and in his later career worked as an editor, including a stint as editor-in-chief of ...
Johnson, Samuel
(1709-1784) UK poet, critic, playwright, lexicographer and author of one novel, The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale (1759; rev 1759; vt The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: An Asiatic Tale 1768; vt The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: A Tale 1787), written to pay for his mother's funeral (he got £100 – a large sum – for the first printing). The profusion of vts above comes from our normal practice of citing title ...
Comet
US Pulp magazine; five issues, December 1940 to July 1941, bimonthly after January 1941. Published by H-K Publications; edited by F Orlin Tremaine. Tremaine, former editor of Astounding, made a brief and undistinguished return to sf-magazine editing with this title. Tremaine wanted to recapture the wonder of Astounding from the mid-thirties, but without the financial support of ...
Midwinter
Videogame (1989). Maelstrom Games (MG). Designed by Mike Singleton. Platforms: AtariST (1989); Amiga, DOS (1990). / Midwinter is an unusual combination of real time Computer Role Playing Game and Computer Wargame, set on an isolated island in the aftermath of a devastating meteorite strike which has plunged ...
Philip K Dick Award
Award founded in 1983 by admirers of Philip K Dick, who died in 1982. Because much of Dick's classic sf was published with no fanfare and initially without a hardcover edition, it seemed appropriate to give the award to a distinguished work of sf or fantasy of the previous year first published in paperback. The award was initially suggested by Thomas M Disch, who was for several years its ...
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 ...