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Sunday 20 April 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.
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Robb, John
Pseudonym of UK author Norman Robson (1917-1993) whose Space Beam (1952) is an unpretentious Space Opera. [JC]
Soviet Union
The vast majority of the sf from what until 1991 was the Soviet Union, especially that translated into English, was in the first instance written and published in Russian (see Russia). A small amount of Soviet sf exists in the various languages other than Russian, notably Ukrainian, in which the dissident writer Oles Berdnyk writes. Little of this material has been translated into Russian, let alone English. The break-up of the USSR will certainly in due course ...
Locus Award
Popular Award voted on by readers of the leading sf news magazine (or Newszine) Locus, and presented annually since 1971. Each year's Locus awards normally honour work first published in the previous year. Thanks to their exceptionally wide reader base, these sf awards have come to share the stature of the Hugos (which reflect the preferences of fans and professionals who attend ...
Bullivant, Cecil H
(1882-1981) UK editor, scriptwriter for silent films and author. He edited The Boys' Herald, 1904-1907, publishing much of his work under various names, including Robert W Dixon, Carlton Grey, Alice Millard and Henry Turville, but most importantly Maurice Everard, which he used for the vt of The Gold of Treasure Island (1916; cut vt Spanish Gold 192? as by Maurice Everard), featuring a Lost Race in the ...
Rabelais, François
(?1483/1494-1553) French monk, doctor, priest and author. The various titles now generally gathered together as Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-1552 plus a posthumous text of dubious authenticity 1564) were initially published as separate volumes [see Checklist for individual titles plus the translations of same by Sir Thomas Urquhart – first two books 1653, third book 1693 – and Peter Anthony Motteux – fourth and fifth books 1694]. ...
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. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...