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Friday 18 July 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 16 July 2025
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Williams, Tess
(1954-2025) UK-born teacher, editor and author, in Australia for many years, there receiving a degree in literature from Curtin University and an MA in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Padwan Affair" in She's Fantastical (anth 1995) edited by Judith Raphael Buckrich and Lucy Sussex. Of sf interest are two novels: Map of Power (1996), set mostly in a ...
Mittié, Jean-Corisandre
(? -? ) French author of Descente en Angleterre ["The Raid on England"] (1798), a very early example of the Future-War Invasion tale, here conceived in dramatic form, apparently farcical; any close resemblance to the much later Battle of Dorking mode is unestablished. [JC]
Atomic Platters
The name – coined by Bill Geerhart at the Conelrad website [see links below] – for a short-lived sub-genre of 1940s and 1950s pop music concerned with an atomic World War Three and its aftermath (see Holocaust). Many, though not all, of the artists and songs that might be so classified fell into later obscurity, but this was in its day a fairly lively aural manifestation of the fascinations of ...
eXistenZ
Film (1999). Alliance Atlantis and Serendipity Point Films present in association with Natural Nylon a Robert Lantos production. Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Cronenberg. Cast includes Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Don McKellar. 97 minutes. Colour. / eXistenZ, Cronenberg's first original script since Videodrome (1982), returns to his familiar themes of media, ...
Jonbar Point
Term occasionally used in sf criticism for a crucial forking-place in Time, whose manipulation via Time Travel can radically affect the future that follows. "Jonbar hinge" has also been used synonymously. The name derives from Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time (May-July 1938 Astounding; rev 1952), which deals with Changewar ...
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 ...