The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

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

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

Publications

• 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 (
    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:
  • Clute, John; Langford, David; Nicholls, Peter; Sleight, Graham, eds. (2011). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (3rd ed.). London: Gollancz. Archived from the original on 19 December 2011.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
• Fourth edition:
  • Clute, John; Langford, David, eds. (2021). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). London and Reading: SFE Ltd and Ansible Editions. Retrieved 7 October 2021.

See also

• The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
• Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978 book)
• The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy
• The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

References