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Sunday 15 June 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.
Site updated on 9 June 2025
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Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Solar System
This encyclopedia deals with sf about our Solar System under the following headwords, moving conventionally outward from the Sun (see also Stars for a more general treatment of suns). There are individual entries for Mercury, Venus, the Moon but not the Earth itself – though links to a great many relevant entries are assembled under a cross-reference ...
Children of the Night
US letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema Fanzine printed on middle-grade paper. Published by Derek Jensen. Editors: Derek Jensen and Matthew Le Master. Ten issues, 1975 to 1985. / A high-quality fanzine with a very irregular schedule, this title carried a great deal of material on the performer Christopher Lee plus considerable amount of coverage of sf films and Television, the latter including such ...
Aspler, Tony
(1939- ) UK-born wine journalist and author, in Canada from 1970; of sf interest among his several novels is Chain Reaction (1978) with Gordon Pape, which concerns the Near Future assassination of a Canadian politician that threatens an American Invasion of Canada as well as World War Three. [JC]
Raine, Craig
(1944- ) UK poet whose first book, The Onion, Memory (coll 1978 chap), demonstrated his capacity to illuminate the world through estranged images, a technique which came to full fruition in A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (coll 1979 chap), the title poem of which represents – in language which convincingly manifests a principle central to Fantastika as a whole, that the fantastic may be best grasped through ...
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 ...