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Friday 17 January 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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Spencer, D A
(? -? ) UK illustrator and author in whose Near Future sf Satire, North Sea Monster: A Novel the Action of Which Commences Next August (1934) with W Randerson, an Island appears in the North Sea. The monstrousness of the island, for those who come upon it, lies in its topological resemblance to the head and torso of a naked woman, including explicit breasts. ...
Defontenay, C I
(1819-1856) French physician – he has been described as the inventor of plastic surgery – and author whose Star, ou Ψ de Cassiopée: histoire merveilleuse de l'un des mondes de l'espace, nature singulière, coutumes, voyages, littérature starienne, poèmes et comédies traduits du starien (1854; trans P J Sokolowski as Star (Psi Cassiopeia) 1975 US, with intro by Pierre Versins) ...
Falls, The
Film (1980). British Film Institute. Directed by Peter Greenaway. Written by Greenaway. 187 minutes. Colour. / Perhaps the most elliptical Disaster in sf Cinema, the Violent Unknown Event (VUE) has killed an unspecified number of people and afflicted 19 million others with bizarre symptoms including physical mutation (see Mutants), recurring dreams of water, sexual quadromorphism, the spontaneous ...
Slavnikova, Ol'ga
(1957- ) Russian author whose Near Future Satire, 2017 (2006; trans Marian Schwartz 2010), set one century after the Russian Revolution, depicts in exorbitant terms the costs of rampant "freedom", including naked capitalism at its most exploitative, Disasters looming from unchecked Climate Change, ...
Sedgwick, S N
(1872-1941) UK minister, composer, playwright and author whose Near Future sf novel, The Last Persecution (1909) is a Yellow Peril story involving the successful Chinese Invasion of Europe. Eventually a religious revival causes the overthrow of the occupation government. [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 ...