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Monday 23 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.
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Marathon Trilogy
Videogame series (from 1994). Bungie Studios (BS). / The Marathon Trilogy is a series of First Person Shooters with a common player character, a twenty-eighth-century Cyborg security officer. The first game, Marathon (1994 BS, Mac; 2011 iOS) designed by Alex Seropian, Jason Jones, begins with an attack by the alien Pfhor on the Marathon, a gigantic interstellar colony ship, constructed from the Martian moon of Deimos. The player must attempt to defeat the Pfhor, alternately aided and ...
Searles, A Langley
(1920-2009) US Fanzine publisher and Professor of Chemistry at the College of Mount St Vincent, New York (he retired in 1987); as publisher from 1943 of Fantasy Commentator (which see for details), he maintained the journal as a significant forum for the study of sf in many of its aspects, though concentrating on early Genre SF. In 1999 he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame. [JC]
Newte, Horace
(1870-1949) UK author and controversialist on political matters whose The Master Beast: Being a True Account of the Ruthless Tyranny Inflicted on the British People by Socialism, A.D. 1888-2020 (1907; vt The Red Fury: Britain Under Bolshevism 1919) lives fully up to its subtitle, telling of a young socialist at the turn of the twentieth century who first experiences a German Invasion of a Britain whose socialist government has left it unprepared; then, after awakening (see Sleeper Awakes) from ...
Telekinesis
An important item of sf Terminology, from the Greek words for "movement at a distance". Thus telekinesis is the ability to move objects by the power of the mind, which after Telepathy is the most commonly used Psi Power in sf. The word was not coined by an sf author: the Oxford English Dictionary gives an 1890 citation from Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. It appeared in sf as early as 1949 – Charles L Harness uses "telekineticist" in "Flight into Yesterday" (May 1949 ...
Saberhagen, Fred
(1930-2007) US author and editor, in the latter capacity with the Encyclopedia Britannica 1967-1973, for which he wrote the original entry on sf. He began publishing sf with "Volume PAA-PYX" for Galaxy in February 1961, and was active from that date, soon releasing the first of his many novels, The Golden People (1964 dos; exp 1984), a Space Opera involving Psi Powers. As an sf author, he became known – and remains best remembered – for the Berserker series of stories and novels, ...
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 ...