SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 11 February 2025
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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 ...
Barnes, Adrian
(1963-2018) UK-born teacher, journalist and author, in Canada from childhood, whose first novel, Satan a la Mode: A Devilish Piece of Good News (2006) is an Absurdist fantasy. His first sf novel, Nod (2012), comprises the manuscript of a man immune to a Near Future sleeping disorder – chronic sleep deprivation – that has effectively ended civilization, turning the sleepless into ...
Ōtomo Katsuhiro
(1954- ) Japanese Manga creator and film-maker, who became the most famous Anime director abroad in the early 1990s, largely on the basis of a single film. Like Hayao Miyazaki in the following decade, he occupied an iconic position as the face of the medium, despite conceiving much of his output in reaction to it. His comics debut, not sf, was with "Jūsei" ["Gun Report"] (August ...
Giant Spider Invasion, The
Film (1975). Group 75/Transcentury. Directed by Bill Rebane. Written by Robert Easton, Richard L Huff. Cast includes Steve Brodie, Alan Hale, Barbara Hale and Leslie Parrish. 76 minutes. Colour. / Noted by one critic, Michael Weldon, as the Monster Movie with the worst special effects since The Giant Claw (1957), this is fondly remembered as the one where the giant spider was built out of a modified ...
Bersianik, Louky
Pseudonym of Canadian teacher and author Lucile Durand (1930-2011), who became of sf interest, after publishing at least eight children's books, for L'Euguèlionne (1976; trans by various hands as The Euguèlionne: A Triptych Novel 1981), a Feminist Satire which follows the complex Fantastic Voyage of an Alien ...
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 ...