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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 28 October 2024
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Pratt, Cornelia Atwood

Working and maiden name of Cornelia Atwood Comer (1865-1929), author with Richard Slee (who has not been traced) of Dr Berkeley's Discovery (1899), in which the titular pathologist solves a mystery with his memory-cell-reading device (see Psychology). In an early variation on the Urban Legend that a dead person's retinas retain the last image seen, this Invention recovers latent visual ...

Glendon, George

(?   -?   ) UK author known only for his sf Near Future novel, The Emperor of the Air (1910), in which the Invention of a superscientific Airship, lifted by a vacuum-creating engine, leads to the destruction of the air fleets of the world, and the brief imposition of a Pax Aeronautica whose rulers speak Esperanto, an ...

Solar Wind

This scientific term has found much favour in sf Terminology. The stars constantly emit highly energetic particles as well as, of course, light, which is itself composed of tiny particles, photons (although here the word "particle" has a slightly different meaning). These particles exert a gentle outward pressure (which is why the tail of a Comet always points away from the Sun). A low-mass ...

Fallout

Videogame (1997). Black Isle Studios (BIS). Designed by Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, Christopher Taylor. Platforms: DOS, Mac, Win. / Fallout is a Computer Role Playing Game which uses an Isometric three-dimensional perspective, set – as was its most important influence, Wasteland (1998) – in the ruins of a ...

Chapbook

In the early nineteenth century this term described a pamphlet on any of a wide range of subjects – from sermons to sensational tales, often illustrated with woodcuts – sold not through bookshops but by "chapmen", who hawked their wares. In the later nineteenth century, the term began to acquire a contrived antiquarian air, and was used to designate a small book or pamphlet produced for collectors. Although the fake antiquarianism attached to the term has since faded, chapbooks in ...

Nicholls, Peter

(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...



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