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Wednesday 15 January 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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Maguire, John Francis
(1815-1872) Irish nationalist politician and journalist, founder of the Cork Examiner. In his sf novel The Next Generation (1871 3vols), set in 1891, the UK has been much improved by steam-powered Balloons and the granting of women's suffrage (see Feminism); romance and the explication of other meliorist reforms just this side of Utopia take up the remainder of a very long book. "Jack ...
Italy
To trace an Italian sf tradition is not easy, because of the well-established split in Italy between scientific language and "literary culture". It is of some relevance to read Dante Alighieri's great poem La divina commedia (circa 1304-1320 in manuscript; first printed edition 1472; trans Henry Cary as The Divine Comedy 1814) as a sort of sf journey; Dante used his theological allegory to create a world that in terms of ...
Van Gelder, Gordon
(1966- ) US editor, publisher and author who published his first story "Santa's Tenth Reindeer" in 100 Great Fantasy Short Short Stories (anth 1984) edited by Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr and Martin H Greenberg, though the majority of his career has been spent as an editor. After a brief internship at Bluejay Books in 1986, ...
Grass, Günter
(1927-2015) German artist, illustrator, sculptor and author, a significant creative and cultural voice in the long self-examination that the German world underwent (for cause) after World War Two; from the publication of his first novel, Die Blechtrommel (1959; trans Ralph Manheim as The Tin Drum 1962), he remained central to that interrogation, sometimes through the enraged and enraging mythopoesis of ...
Cyborg 009
1. Japanese animated film (1966). Based on the Manga by Shotaro Ishinomori. Toei Animation. Directed by Yugo Serikawa. Written by Takashi Iijima and Yugo Serikawa. Voice cast includes Judy Ong, Hiroyuki Oota and Jouji Yanami. 65 minutes. Colour. / This was the first of several Anime based on the long-running manga Cyborg 009 (1964-1981). / When racing driver Shimamura Joe's ...
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 ...