English language reference work
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
(
SFE
) is an English language
reference work
on
science fiction
, first published in 1979. It has won the
Hugo
,
Locus
and
British SF
Awards. Two print editions appeared in 1979 and 1993. A third, continuously revised, edition was published online from 2011; a change of web host was announced as the launch of a fourth edition in 2021.
History
[
edit
]
The first edition, edited by
Peter Nicholls
with
John Clute
,
[1]
was published by
Granada
in 1979. It was retitled
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia
when published by
Doubleday
in the United States. Accompanying its text were numerous black and white photographs illustrating authors, book and magazine covers, film and TV stills, and examples of artists' work.
[2]
A second edition, jointly edited by Nicholls and Clute, was published in 1993 by
Orbit
in the UK and
St. Martin's Press
in the US. The second edition contained 1.3 million words, almost twice the 700,000 words of the 1979 edition.
[3]
The 1995 paperback edition included a sixteen-page
addendum
(dated "7 August 1995"). Unlike the first edition, the print versions did not contain illustrations. There was also a CD-ROM version in 1995, styled variously as
The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
and
Grolier Science Fiction
.
[4]
This contained text updates through 1995, hundreds of book covers and author photos, a small number of old film trailers, and author video clips taken from the
TVOntario
series
Prisoners of Gravity
.
The companion volume, published after the second print edition and following its format closely, is
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
edited by John Clute and
John Grant
.
[4]
All print and CD-ROM editions are currently out of print.
In July 2011,
Orion Publishing Group
announced that the third edition of
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia
would be released online later that year by SFE Ltd in association with
Victor Gollancz
, Orion's science fiction imprint. The "beta text" of the third edition launched online on 2 October 2011,
[5]
with editors John Clute,
David Langford
, Peter Nicholls (as editor emeritus until his death in 2018) and Graham Sleight. The encyclopedia is updated regularly (usually several times a week) by the editorial team with material written by themselves and contributed by science fiction academics and experts.
[1]
It received the
Hugo Award for Best Related Work
in 2012. Though the
SFE
is a composite work with a considerable number of contributors, the three main editors (Clute, Langford and Nicholls) have themselves written almost two-thirds of the 5.2 million words to date (September 2016), giving a sense of unity to the whole.
[4]
The
Encyclopedia
ended its arrangement with Orion on 29 September 2021 and moved to a new, self-owned web server. The move was completed by 6 October 2021, and announced as the launch of the fourth edition. While based on the earlier design, the new edition incorporates a number of revisions; for instance, many author entries now include thumbnails of the author's book covers, randomly selected from the relevant Gallery pages.
[6]
Contents
[
edit
]
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
contains entries under the categories of authors, themes, terminology, science fiction in various countries, films, filmmakers, television, magazines, fanzines, comics, illustrators, book publishers, original anthologies, awards, and miscellaneous.
[7]
The online edition of
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
was released in October 2011 with 12,230 entries, totaling 3,200,000 words. The editors predicted that it would contain 4,000,000 words upon completion of the first round of updates at the end of 2012; this figure was actually reached in January 2013, and 5,000,000 words in November 2015.
[8]
Awards
[
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]
Publications
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]
- First edition:
- Nicholls, Peter, ed. (1979).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: An Illustrated A to Z
. St Albans, Herts, UK: Granada Publishing Ltd.
ISBN
978-0-246-11020-6
.
672 pp.
[10]
- Second edition:
- Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter, eds. (1993).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
(2nd ed.). London: Orbit Books.
ISBN
978-1-85723-124-3
.
xxxvi + 1370 pp.
[11]
- Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter, eds. (1995).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
(2nd ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press.
ISBN
978-0-312-13486-0
.
xxxvi + 1386 pp.
[11]
- Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter, eds. (1995).
The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
(
CD-ROM
) (2nd ed.). Danbury, CT: Grolier Science Fiction.
ISBN
978-0-7172-3999-3
.
[11]
- Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter, eds. (1999).
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
(2nd ed.). London: Orbit Books.
ISBN
978-1-85723-897-6
.
xxxvi + 1396 pp.
[11]
- Third edition:
- Fourth edition:
See also
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References
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]
External links
[
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]