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Friday 29 September 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.
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Alternate Worlds
An alternate world – some writers and commentators prefer the designation "alternative world" on grammatical grounds – is an account of Earth as it might have become in consequence of some hypothetical alteration in history. Many sf stories use Parallel Worlds as a frame in which multiple alternate worlds can coexist, sometimes interacting with one another. Previous editions of this encyclopedia discussed ...
Cohen, Bernard
(1963- ) US-born author, in Australia since his family moved there while he was an infant. Besides some mainstream work he wrote Snowdome (1998), a complex tale comparing, through parallel storylines, the congested noise-contaminated Sydney of 1998, and a Dystopian future in which Sydney has been depopulated, except for the sound of reproduced voices in museums, giving tourists a viewpoint on the dead past. The title refers to ...
Truth Quotient, The
Performance (2013; vt This Rough Magic). Written by Richard Manly; directed by Eric Parness; produced by Resonance Ensemble; featuring Jarel Davidow, Angelina Fiordellisi, Meredith Howard, Brian Tom O'Connor, Shaun Bennet Wilson and Maxwell Zener. Samuel Beckett Theatre, New York City, 9 January 2013. / In Richard Manly's The Truth Quotient, what is real and what is true come to the fore in the story of billionaire entrepreneur David (Davidow). David has purchased ...
Morghen, Filippo
(1739-1807 or after) Italian printmaker and engraver, born in Florence but working in Naples from circa 1760. Much of his work comprised engravings of the antiquities of Italy, such as the ruined cities of Paestum and Herculaneum, showing their architecture, frescoes, statues and other art. / However, Morghen also produced Raccolta delle cose più notabili veduta dal cavaliere Wilde Scull, e dal Sigr: de la Hire nel lor famoso viaggio dalla Terra alla Luna ["Collection ...
Ore, Rebecca
Pseudonym of US author Rebecca Bard Brown (1948- ), in Nicaragua from 2010, who began publishing sf with "Projectile Weapons and Wild Alien Water" for Amazing in May 1986; many of her stories, which are strong and varied, appear in Alien Bootlegger and Other Stories (coll 1993), though she probably remains best known for the Becoming Alien Trilogy, Becoming Alien (1988), Being Alien (1989) 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 consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...