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Friday 2 June 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.
Site updated on 29 May 2023
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Felice, Cynthia
(1942- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Longshanks" for Galileo #2 in 1976. Her first novel, Godsfire (1978), depicts an Alien planet inhabited by felines who dominate the local humans but who have never seen their sun because of the unending rain. Almost too well constructed – almost facile in its zestful plotting – the book demonstrated Felice's technical skill, her romantic ...
Soft Sciences
In academic slang and sf Terminology, the soft sciences are in the main the social sciences, those which deal mainly with human affairs – very often the sciences that require little or no hardware for their carrying out. (Most would claim Biology and subsidiary fields – e.g., Clones and Genetic Engineering – as hard sciences [see ...
Gawron, Jean Mark
(1953- ) French-born US academic and author, who researches in and teaches computational linguistics; his first sf novel, An Apology for Rain (1974), traces the travels of a woman in search of her brother through a surreal USA. It was followed by Algorithm (1978), in which complex Linguistic operations are used to structure the responses of a sidelined Earth to the greater galaxy, and the more conventionally ...
Starfall
Role Playing Game (2015). Wordplay Games. Written by Paul Mitchener, based on the Wordplay game system by Graham Spearing. / Small Press Horror in SF roleplaying game that mines the transition of the gritty, pessimistic tenor (see Optimism and Pessimism) of the UK-specific ...
Photon
US letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema Fanzine. Publisher and editor: Mark Frank. 27 issues, appearing on a highly erratic schedule from 1963 to 1977. / Originally launched as a mature alternative to Famous Monsters of Filmland, this well-remembered fanzine featured various aspects of Horror and sf cinema, including articles on director Tod Browning and ...
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 ...