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Friday 27 May 2022
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 23 May 2022
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Potter, J K
(1956- ) Working name of American artist Jeffrey Knight Potter; some works are signed Jeff K Potter. Although born in California, he has lived most of his life in the American South, a region which he reports has had a major impact on his extravagantly outré artwork. After contributing to fanzines, Potter began his career by doing covers for small press publications (see Small Presses and Limited Editions), beginning with H Warner Munn's Tales of the Werewolf Clan ...
Expanded Horizons
US low-paying downloadable Online Magazine of Speculative Fiction, edited by D Ash (known as Dash) of Drums, Pennsylvania, and produced by J Cady (known as Jacie). Published monthly, with occasional gaps, since October 2008. It has been on hiatus since issue #60 (September 2018). / The magazine's stated mission is "to increase diversity in the field of speculative fiction" and provide a venue "so that under-represented minorities who tend to be represented unrealistically or negatively in ...
Narayan, R K
(1906-2001) Working name of Indian author Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, noted for realistic novels about everyday life in southern India. He is of mild sf interest because a subplot of his novel The Vendor of Sweets (1967) involves a proposal to construct a Machine to write novels (see Wordmills). [GW]
Keith, William H, Jr
(1950- ) US author who has specialized in Military SF sequences, often Tied to Games or other proprietary worlds; it is presumed that those written for enterprises like the Wargame Battletech are Sharecrops. He is efficient and prolific, but relatively few individual characteristics manifest themselves. Though his very frequent use of pseudonyms – some of them with his brother, Andrew Keith, some of them not necessarily revealed, as well as his work as a ghostwriter ...
Matter Transmission
The matter transmitter is one of sf's many facilitating devices for Transportation: a hypothetical machine which is not rationally plausible in terms of known science (at least at any macroscopic scale) but which is very convenient for certain narrative purposes (see Imaginary Science). By virtue of an obvious play on words, matter transmitters were sometimes called "transmats" – as in Lan Wright's "Transmat" (November 1960 Science Fiction Adventures UK) – but the contraction never ...
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 November 1966, where much of his earlier criticism also appeared. This criticism, despite some studiously ...