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Tuesday 13 May 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 12 May 2025
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Taboos
The Polynesian word "tabu", from which the English term is taken, was first recorded in 1777 by Captain James Cook (1728-1779) near the end of his last tour of the South Pacific on behalf of the expanding British empire; unsurprisingly perhaps, the word "taboo" was initially applied by early anthropologists to representative of other, exotic, "inferior" cultures: white civilization had evolved beyond taboo (see Evolution). Within that frame of application, the term ...
Shteyngart, Gary
(1972- ) Russian-born author, in US since 1979; his birth-name, which he changed at an early age, was Igor Shteyngart. The extravagance of his first novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002), with its confabulatory rendering of an imaginary Prague (here named Prava), slips uneasily into hints of a fuller Fantastika. Of his later works two are of more direct sf interest: Absurdistan (2006) is a gonzo ...
Ville d'Avray, Arthur Armand
(1844-1907) French soldier, naturalist and author whose Voyage dans la Lune avant 1900 ["Voyage to the Moon around 1900"] (graph 1892) is a visual narrative, illustrated and captioned by Ville d'Avary, and apparently intended for children. Its protagonists fly to the Moon in a Balloon, where they confront Monsters; they are then transported to Saturn (see ...
April and the Extraordinary World
French-Belgian-Canadian animated film (2015; original title Avril et le Monde truqué). Je Suis Bien Content, StudioCanal, Kaibou Productions, Need Productions, Arte France Ciném, Jouror Distribution, RTBF, Proximus, Tchack. Directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci. Written by Franck Ekinci and Benjamin Legrand. Voice cast includes Benoît Brière, Anne Coesens, Marion Cotillard, Philippe Katerine and Jean Rochefort. 106 minutes. Colour. / A ...
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 ...