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Saturday 8 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 ...
Weather Control
The human dream of controlling the weather is an old one. It appears in Proto SF in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759), in the unreliable words of a Mad Scientist astronomer: "I have possessed, for five years, the regulation of weather, and the distribution of seasons: the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed, from tropick to tropick, by my direction; the clouds, at my call have ...
Space Documentaries
Documentaries about the future of Space Flight have sometimes included fictional sequences employing actors as astronauts venturing into outer space; these are effectively sf Spacesuit Films, even though they are classified as nonfiction. An early German example is Wunder der Schöpfung (1925; vt Our Heavenly Bodies), which includes a journey through the Solar System ...
Brown, Charles R
(? -? ) UK author of at least two sf tales; others may not have been identified. / In the anonymous A Man from the Moon (1870 chap), a mountain climber, resting at the summit of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes, encounters a man from the Moon who tells him that humanity is part but not necessarily the peak of Evolution, and who decries the feeble arguments of human ...
Avenger, The
Pulp Magazine published by Street & Smith for 24 issues, September 1939 to September 1942. Publication was monthly to July 1940, then bimonthly to the end. Edited by John Nanovic. / Each issue of The Avenger featured a short novel by Paul Ernst writing as Kenneth Robeson, plus short ...
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 ...