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Saturday 15 February 2025
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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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Back Brain Recluse
UK Semiprozine, from June 1984 to October 2002; edited by Chris Reed initially at Smallfield, Surrey, then (from issue #9) from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and from #16 from Sheffield, South Yorkshire; 24 issues, published at irregular intervals but usually twice a year, but after issue #21 (November 1992) there was only one issue each in 1994, 1997 and 2002. It began as a slim-but-ambitious A5 format xeroxed Fanzine but switched to A4 ...
Jeschke, Wolfgang
(1936-2015) Czech-born editor and author, in Germany after 1945; winner of the 1987 Harrison Award for achievements in international sf. He began to publish sf with "Die Anderen" ["The Others"] in 1959, but first became strongly involved with the genre in 1969 when, while working as co-editor of Kinders Literaturlexikon he edited as a freelancer the Science Fiction fur Kenner ["Science Fiction for Connoisseurs"] series for Lichtenberg Verlag. In 1973 he took ...
Bramah, Ernest
Working name of UK author Ernest Brammah Smith (1868-1942) for all his writing; he is best-known for two series, the Max Carrados sequence [see Checklist below] about a blind detective, all of whose Perceptions (except of course sight) are enormously enhanced by rigorous training; and a series of tales in which the Chinese Kai Lung displays his skills as a professional story-teller – often to stave off some unpleasant fate, like Scheherazade. ...
Lovecraft, H P
(1890-1937) US author who spent almost all his life in Providence, Rhode Island, maintaining extensive social contacts mainly by mail. He was an important figure by correspondence in the careers of many authors who later published work clearly influenced by him; and the correspondence between him and Robert E Howard illuminates these two solitary (but intensely communicative) figures. He joined the United Amateur Press Association (see ...
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 ...