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News item dated 21 October 2025

Condensed from a Facebook post by John Clute:

Most of what I write these days is in the form of new entries and entry-revisions for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, a task (for 20 years with David Langford) I’ve no inclination to ease up on. But times have changed. The SFE is free now and will always be free. We’ve been published over the decades by various publishers (Doubleday, Granada, St Martin’s, Orbit, Gollancz). Those times have passed. Since 2021 we’ve survived on momentum and donations, mainly because of David’s genius at site construction and maintenance; and if we were ourselves able to work for free the SFE could continue afloat (though not exactly flourishing) indefinitely. Which is to say we can’t work for free (and because of donations haven’t had to); but that at the same time we’re not exactly prosperous, and can’t expand as fast as we think we need to (even though, as of today, our wordcount is more than ten times the wordcount of the 1979 first edition).

So I’ve decided to contribute a weekly post on a new Substack site, only just now active. The site is called The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. The link is:

This Substack site is free to access and will clock the sf world as it changes, and more particularly how SFE records and honours these changes. There will be retrospectives and news updates and thoughts about navigating our 7,500,000 words and counting. There’s a lot of serendipity inside the SFE, and some Easter Eggs.

But after five or so of my own posts have gone up – which should demonstrate the sort of thing I’d like to do – the more substantial ones will move over to a subscription basis. I’m thinking I’ll do around one extended piece a week, plus shorter free-access posts when they come to mind, though frequency will vary. The first five are already up or will be very soon.

All subscriptions will be thought of and treated as donations to the SFE itself. Any income will go directly to the SFE and will be spent variously. Supporting me and David. Running the site. Expanding the coverage. The minimum subscription level Substack allows will be our basic charge, around £3 a month. I will be thinking of my dedicated posts as ways of saying thank you.

So. Should be exciting to talk about making the SFE sing better.

John Clute



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