The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

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The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Cover of the first edition
Editor	Peter Nicholls, John Clute; David Langford from 2011
Language	English
Subject	Science fiction
Publisher	Granada, 1979 St. Martin's Press, 1993, 1995 Orbit Books, 1993, 1999
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (1979, 1993, 1995, 1999) CD-ROM (1995) Online (2011)
Pages	672 pp, 1979 1370 pp, 1993 1386 pp, 1995 1396 pp, 1999
OCLC	365133329
Dewey Decimal	809.3876203
LC Class	PN3433.4

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

First edition

The first edition, edited by Peter Nicholls with John Clute, 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.

Second edition

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. 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. 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.

Third edition

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, 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. 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.

Fourth edition

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.

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.

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.

Reception

Writer Ian Watson reviewed the first edition in 1980, the journal Foundation. Watson noted his positive surprise that the publication contains much smaller amount of errors than expected, and noted that its format allows for easy correction of those in the expected second edition. He concluded that the "volume is a genuine encyclopedia - the first such. It is the Britannica of the sf field", positively commenting on the breadth and scope of the entries, and even the illustrations, which are informative, and not just decorations.

Edward James, a British scholar of medieval history and science fiction, praised the second edition of the encyclopedia in his review (also for the journal Foundation) in 1993, writing that it is "the one indispensable volume on every sf readers' shelf: not only the best reference work in the field, but one of the best reference works I have seen in ''any'' field". Edwards did, however, found the "sneering" tone of some film entries (de facto film reviews) less than ideal for an encyclopedia. James also noted that although the project is a collaborative effort, nearly half of the entries for that edition have been written by Clute, which he saw as a very impressive achievement on his part.

Writer Gary Westfahl also reviewed the second edition, for the journal Extrapolation. He called it "an invaluable compendium of and contribution to fifty years of science fiction research", representing "a true conceptual breakthrough" for the field of science fiction studies, and noted that even more than the encyclopedia's previous edition, this one "is the one essential reference book for anyone interested in science fiction". He also predicted that "this work will justifiably be cited in all studies of science fiction during the next decade, and those studies will be significantly better because of Clute and Nicholl's painstaking work". Nonetheless he noted that the volume is not perfect, and contains some errors as well as several entries on novel topics that could use more grounding in prior research before being written about in an encyclopedia".

Nicholas Ruddick briefly commented on the second edition, noting that it has been "highly praised".

Briefly commenting on the third edition, Andrew M. Butler called it "a gold standard for reference works in the field".

Awards

Edition	Awards
1st ed. (1979)	Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book Locus Award for Best Related Non-Fiction
2nd ed. (1993)	Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction BSFA Award (Special Award)
3rd ed. (2011)	Hugo Award for Best Related Work BSFA Award for Best Non-Fiction

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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.