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.
Ted Chiang is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus awards. He has published the short story collections Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) and Exhalation: Stories (2019). His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame in 2020–2021. Chiang is also a frequent non-fiction contributor to the New Yorker Magazine, most recently on topics related to computer technology, such as artificial intelligence.
Hayford Peirce was an American writer of science fiction, mysteries, and a spy thriller. He wrote numerous short stories for the science-fiction magazines Analog, Galaxy, and Omni, as well as mystery shorts for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, founded in 1968, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is the news organ and trade journal for the English-language science fiction and fantasy fields. It also publishes comprehensive listings of all new books published in the genres. The magazine also presents the annual Locus Awards. Locus Online was launched in April 1997, as a semi-autonomous web version of Locus Magazine.
Fictional depictions of Mercury, the innermost planet of the Solar System, have gone through three distinct phases. Before much was known about the planet, it received scant attention. Later, when it was incorrectly believed that it was tidally locked with the Sun creating a permanent dayside and nightside, stories mainly focused on the conditions of the two sides and the narrow region of permanent twilight between. Since that misconception was dispelled in the 1960s, the planet has again received less attention from fiction writers, and stories have largely concentrated on the harsh environmental conditions that come from the planet's proximity to the Sun.
Saturn has made appearances in fiction since the 1752 novel Micromégas by Voltaire. In the earliest depictions, it was portrayed as having a solid surface rather than its actual gaseous composition. In many of these works, the planet is inhabited by aliens that are usually portrayed as being more advanced than humans. In modern science fiction, the Saturnian atmosphere sometimes hosts floating settlements. The planet is occasionally visited by humans and its rings are sometimes mined for resources.
In science fiction, a time viewer, temporal viewer, or chronoscope is a device that allows another point in time to be observed. The concept has appeared since the late 19th century, constituting a significant yet relatively obscure subgenre of time travel fiction and appearing in various media including literature, cinema, and television. Stories usually explain the technology by referencing cutting-edge science, though sometimes invoking the supernatural instead. Most commonly only the past can be observed, though occasionally time viewers capable of showing the future appear; these devices are sometimes limited in terms of what information about the future can be obtained. Other variations on the concept include being able to listen to the past but not view it.
Planets outside of the Solar System have appeared in fiction since at least the 1850s, long before the first real ones were discovered in the 1990s. Most of these fictional planets do not differ significantly from the Earth, and serve only as settings for the narrative. The majority host native lifeforms, sometimes with humans integrated into the ecosystems. Fictional planets that are not Earth-like vary in many different ways. They may have significantly stronger or weaker gravity on their surfaces, or have a particularly hot or cold climate. Both desert planets and ocean planets appear, as do planets with unusual chemical conditions. Various peculiar planetary shapes have been depicted, including flattened, cubic, and toroidal. Some fictional planets exist in multiple-star systems where the orbital mechanics can lead to exotic day–night or seasonal cycles, while others do not orbit any star at all. More fancifully, planets are occasionally portrayed as having sentience, though this is less common than stars receiving the same treatment or a planet's lifeforms having a collective consciousness.
Science-Fiction Handbook, subtitled The Writing of Imaginative Fiction, is a guide to writing and marketing science fiction and fantasy by L. Sprague de Camp, "one of the earliest books about modern sf." The original edition was published in hardcover by Hermitage House in 1953 as a volume in its Professional Writers Library series. A revised edition, by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, titled Science Fiction Handbook, Revised, was published in hardcover by Owlswick Press in 1975 and as a trade paperback by McGraw-Hill in 1977. An E-book version of the revised edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on April 30, 2014.
Black holes, objects whose gravity is so strong that nothing—including light—can escape them, have been depicted in fiction since at least the pulp era of science fiction, before the term black hole was coined. A common portrayal at the time was of black holes as hazards to spacefarers, a motif that has also recurred in later works. The concept of black holes became popular in science and fiction alike in the 1960s. Authors quickly seized upon the relativistic effect of gravitational time dilation, whereby time passes more slowly closer to a black hole due to its immense gravitational field. Black holes also became a popular means of space travel in science fiction, especially when the notion of wormholes emerged as a relatively plausible way to achieve faster-than-light travel. In this concept, a black hole is connected to its theoretical opposite, a so-called white hole, and as such acts as a gateway to another point in space which might be very distant from the point of entry. More exotically, the point of emergence is occasionally portrayed as another point in time—thus enabling time travel—or even an entirely different universe.
Two Complete Science-Adventure Books was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Fiction House, which lasted for eleven issues between 1950 and 1954 as a companion to Planet Stories. Each issue carried two novels or long novellas. It was initially intended to carry only reprints, but soon began to publish original stories. Contributors included Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, and James Blish. The magazine folded in 1954, almost at the end of the pulp era.
A Planet for Texans is a science-fiction novel written by Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire. It was first published in the March 1957 issue of Fantastic Universe as Lone Star Planet and first published in book form in Ace Double D-299 in 1958. The story originated in a suggestion by H. L. Mencken and presents a world on which the assassination of politicians is accepted practice. It eventually won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1999.
Voodoo Planet is a science fiction novel by American writer Andre Norton, first published in 1959 by Ace Books. This is a short novel that was usually published in a double-novel format. It is part of the Solar Queen series of novels.
The Crystal Empire is a 1986 novel by American science fiction and alternate history writer L. Neil Smith. It is set in an alternate universe that shares with Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, Robert Silverberg's The Gate of Worlds and Harry Turtledove's In High Places a point of divergence where the Black Death kills much more of Europe's population than it did in reality, opening the way for a Muslim conquest of Europe. The plague also decimates the Mongol Empire, allowing a Mughal power to arise in the Far East in its place.
"The Pi Man" is a science fiction short story by American writer Alfred Bester. It was first published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, in 1959. Bester subsequently revised it extensively for his 1976 collection Star Light, Star Bright, changing the characters' names, "develop(ing) minor scenes", modifying the typographical "word pictures", and deleting several "stale references to beatnik culture".
Jane Palmer is an author and illustrator of speculative fiction from the United Kingdom. In addition to novels, she writes short stories and children's picture books.
More Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Novelettes by Women About Women is an anthology of five novelettes and two short stories edited by Pamela Sargent. It was published in 1976. The collection reprints work by female science fiction authors originally published from 1935 to 1974, arranged in chronological order.
The New Women of Wonder: Recent Science Fiction Stories by Women About Women is an anthology of short stories, novelettes, novellas, and a poem edited by Pamela Sargent. The collection reprinted work by contemporary female science fiction authors, originally published from 1967 to 1977. It was published in 1978.
Women of Wonder, the Contemporary Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s is an anthology of short stories, novelettes, and novellas edited by Pamela Sargent. It was published in 1995, along a companion volume, Women of Wonder,The Classic Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s.
The Sun has appeared as a setting in fiction at least since classical antiquity, but for a long time it received relatively sporadic attention. Many of the early depictions viewed it as an essentially Earth-like and thus potentially habitable body—a once-common belief about celestial objects in general known as the plurality of worlds—and depicted various kinds of solar inhabitants. As more became known about the Sun through advances in astronomy, in particular its temperature, solar inhabitants fell out of favour save for the occasional more exotic alien lifeforms. Instead, many stories focused on the eventual death of the Sun and the havoc it would wreak upon life on Earth. Before it was understood that the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, the prevailing assumption among writers was that combustion was the source of its heat and light, and it was expected to run out of fuel relatively soon. Even after the true source of the Sun's energy was determined in the 1920s, the dimming or extinction of the Sun remained a recurring theme in disaster stories, with occasional attempts at averting disaster by reigniting the Sun. Another common way for the Sun to cause destruction is by exploding, and other mechanisms such as solar flares also appear on occasion.
