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Monday 10 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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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Milner, Andrew
(1950- ) British-born academic, in Australia for many years, sociologist of literature and cultural theorist; educated as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he studied sociology; his PhD thesis was published as John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature (1981). He taught in Sociology at the London School of Economics and at Goldsmiths College, London, in Cultural Studies at the ...
Murray, V T
(1874-1956) UK journalist, playwright and author of an Equipoisal fantasy/Scientific Romance, The Rule of the Beasts (1925), in which a homiletic journal, beginning in 1933 just as a devastating Pandemic initiates among its survivors a terminal World War Two, has been discovered in the fortieth century, when it is presented with scholarly ...
Harness, Charles L
(1915-2005) US patent attorney and author, born in Texas. His first published story was "Time Trap" for Astounding in August 1948, a convoluted Time-Loop tale involving the working of tremendous forces off-stage and a quasi-transcendental experience as the hero goes back in time to remake the world. His subsequent output for the next several years showed a remarkable consistency in echoing and developing these themes. His first two novels, ...
Cinema
The basis on which films and film-makers have been selected for inclusion in this volume is discussed in the Introduction to the Second Book Edition. / From the outset, the cinema specialized in illusion to a degree that had been impossible on the stage. Sf itself takes as its subject matter that which does not exist, now, in the real world (though it might one day), so it has a natural affinity with the cinema: the illusory ...
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 ...