SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 15 July 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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Wood, Nick
(1961-2023) Zambian-born clinical psychologist and author, raised in South Africa and USA, later resident in the UK, He began to publish work of genre interest with "African Shadows" as Nicholas Wood in Scheherazade 18 dated 1999, his first professional sale being "God in the Box" in Interzone for March 2003. His debut novel, The Stone Chameleon (2004), Equipoisally mixes a depiction of ...
Robinsonade
Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) provides the name and is the central model for the robinsonade, which may be defined as the romance of solitary survival in such inimical (though ultimately compliant) terrains as desert Islands (or planets), seen as a success-story. Earlier tales do exist (in The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction [1941], Philip Babcock ...
Space Cases
US/Canadian tv series (1996-1997). CINAR Productions for Nickelodeon television network (US), Family and TVOntario (Canada). Created by Peter David and Bill Mumy. Directors included John Bell, Jeff Blyth, Otta Hanus, David Straiton. Writers included Jerry Colker, David, Magda Liolis, and Mumy. Cast includes Kristian Ayre, Paul Boretski, Walter Jones, Cary Lawrence and Jewel Staite. 27 30-minute episodes. Colour. / In a future Space Academy orbiting ...
Schweitzer, Darrell
(1952- ) US critic, editor, bookseller and author who was early active in sf Fandom, publishing some amateur fiction, though his first professional story of genre interest was "Come to Mother" for Weirdbook #4 in 1971, but who has spent his energies very variously for many years, coming initially to notice with a series of critical studies [they are broken down in the Checklist below] including Lovecraft in the Cinema (1975 ...
Weekley, Ian
(1933-2014) UK teacher and author, who should not be confused with the artist and modeller Ian Weekley (1932-2005). His sf novel, The Moving Snow (1974), rather prosaically describes how a family copes with a Climate Change crisis that brings severe Arctic conditions to the UK. All in all they survive snugly (see Cosy Catastrophe). [JC]
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 ...