SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 23 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 21 April 2025
Sponsor of the day: Stuart Hopen
Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
McClure's Magazine
US Slick magazine published by S S McClure, edited by Ida Tarbell and others. Monthly June 1893 to January 1926 (irregularly towards the end). Recommenced June 1926 as a romance magazine. Merged with Smart Set in April 1929. / Samuel S McClure (1857-1949) made his money establishing the first US newspaper syndicate, and used this knowledge when he launched his monthly magazine to save costs by drawing some of his stories from those published in Britain, ...
Tidyman, Ernest
(1928-1984) US journalist, author and screenwriter, author of the Shaft series of books about a Black detective, and of scripts for the Shaft movies, The French Connection (1971) and the supernatural Western High Plains Drifter (1973), among others. His sf novel, Absolute Zero (1971), is a Near-Future thriller whose protagonist becomes involved in Cryonics in an attempt to ...
Batman
This Comic-book crimefighter, the archetypal masked avenger (though influenced by earlier such figures, notably The Shadow), nicknamed "The Caped Crusader" and "The Dark Knight", has become a twentieth-century Icon. He is not a Superhero in the strictest sense, since he is represented as having no superhuman abilities; however, his near-impossible strength, stamina and athletic ...
Barthelme, Donald
(1931-1989) US author known primarily as a surrealist and black humorist. Most of his short fiction and at least three of his four novels can be described as Fabulations (see also Absurdist SF): Snow White (1967), an absurdist dissection of the fairy tale; The Dead Father (1975), in which the giant figure of a moribund Father is escorted with trauma and ritual to its final resting place; and ...
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 ...