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Friday 7 February 2025
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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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Rheingold, Howard
(1947- ) US online entrepreneur, editor and author, whose fiction consists of two series: the Sisterhood sequence beginning with Mama Liz Drinks Deep (1973); and the Savage Report sequence, comprising Jack Anderson Against Dr Tek! (1974) and Savage Report #2: War of the Gurus (1974), a Near Future Satire recording the attempts of a conservative conspiracy to ...
Altov, Genrikh
Pseudonym of Russian author and sf critic Genrikh Altshuller (1926-1998); a trained engineer, he registered dozens of patents, and is most widely known for establishing the Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadach (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) or TRIZ. He spent four years in a prison camp for political dissidents after writing a scathing letter to Stalin criticizing the lack of industrial and scientific inventiveness in the USSR. His unpublished "Altov's Register" is a mammoth ...
OMPA
Known usually by its acronym, the Offtrails Magazine Publishers Association (1954-1978 or 1979) was an APA formed in the UK by Kenneth Bulmer and A Vincent Clarke, whose founder members included Chuck Harris. OMPA was modelled on FAPA, and was likewise created to facilitate distribution of Fanzines published by and for ...
Cats
Cats are arguably the only Alien beings that humans regularly interact with; for while the attitudes and behaviours of thoroughly domesticated Dogs are readily comprehensible to their owners, the feelings and actions of cats can seem enigmatic and inexplicable, and even long-time cat owners may feel that they do not always understand the furry animals that they have welcomed into their homes. It is only logical, then, that many sf fans (see ...
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 ...