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Wednesday 22 March 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.
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Stillman, Ron
Pseudonym of US author Don Bendell (1947- ), of the Tracker Military-SF series starring a USAF pilot and genius whose inventions make his blindness irrelevant; the stories are told in a maliciously exaggerated Parody of the conventions of this sort of fiction. The sequence so far comprises Tracker (1990), Green Lightning (1990), Blood Money (1991), ...
Barfield, Owen
(1898-1997) UK author and philologist who served in World War One; his first book, The Silver Trumpet (1925), is Fantasy. He was long involved with the Anthroposophical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). A member of the Inklings group and a long-time associate of C S Lewis, Barfield contributed to Essays Presented to Charles Williams (anth ...
Pakenham, Ivo
(1903-1980) UK interior decorator, antiques dealer and author whose one novel, Fanfaronade (1934), is a tale involving Timeslip from 1928 to France in 1474. The protagonist, who has lost his Memory (see Amnesia), spends some adventurous years in this world, until recovering his memory he awakens again in the contemporary world. [JC]
Balch, Frank
(1881-1937) US inventor and author, creator of an improved X-ray technology in 1916 which markedly reduced the time necessary for gaining an image; his sf novel, A Submarine Tour (1905) manages – in a narrative painfully derived from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) – to visit more than one Lost World, including Atlantis, in a submarine ...
Red Giant
Performance (2014). Composed by Adam Matlock; libretto by Brian Slattery; directed by Britt Olsen-Ecker. Produced by Rhymes With Opera, featuring Elisabeth Halliday (soprano), Bonnie Lander (soprano), and Robert Maril (baritone). / During their 2013-2014 season Rhymes With Opera produced Red Giant, a chamber opera composed by Adam Matlock for three singers and a small orchestra. Sf author Brian Francis Slattery wrote the libretto; ...
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 publishing sf reviews in 1964 and sf proper with "A Man Must Die" in New Worlds for ...