SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 16 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 14 July 2025
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Science Fantasy Yearbook
One of the many reprint Digest-size magazines from Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing Co, using stories from old issues of Amazing and Fantastic Adventures, including Theodore Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels (February 1950 Fantastic Adventures; exp 1950; vt ...
Saturn [magazine]
US Digest-size magazine. Published by Robert C Sproul as Candar Publishing Company. Edited by Sproul with editorial consultant Donald A Wollheim, who actually selected the stories and assembled the issues. Five issues March 1957 to March 1958 (but see below for later incarnations). / Considering some of the contributors, there was surprisingly little of interest in the magazine: Harlan ...
Firefly
US tv series (2002). Mutant Enemy for 20th Century Fox Television. Created by Joss Whedon. Producers include Whedon, Tim Minear, and Ben Edlund. Directors include Whedon, Minear, and Vern Gillum. Writers include Whedon, Minear, Edlund, Jose Molina, and Jane Espenson. Cast includes Nathan Fillion as Malcolm Reynolds, Gina Torres as Zoe Washburn, Alan Tudyk as Hoban "Wash" Washburn, Jewel Staite as Kaylee Frye, Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Morena Baccarin as ...
Ernst, Paul
(1899-1985) US author, mostly of short fiction for Pulp markets, sometimes under his own name and sometimes (once in Weird Tales) under the pseudonym Paul Frederick Stern; he should not be confused with either (Karl Friedrich) Paul Ernst (1866-1933), a German writer in various genres, or with Paul Ernst (1886-? ) who wrote 1930s detective novels. His first published story may have been "The Temple of Serpents" in ...
Foss, Chris
(1946- ) Working name of British artist Christopher F Foss. Foss studied architecture at Cambridge University, and he has worked in sf Illustration since 1970, primarily as a cover artist; he uses brush and airbrush to excellent effect. Foss's smooth, representational style, demonstrated on hundreds of covers, spearheaded a revolution in British sf paperback design in the 1970s, and the artist's success inspired many imitators, creating ...
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 ...