Encyclopedia

The first edition, edited by Peter Nicholls with John Clute and Brian Stable ford appeared in 1979, published by Granada. It was retitled The Science Fiction Encyclopedia in the US when published by Doubleday.

A greatly expanded second edition, jointly edited by Nicholls and Clute, did not appear until 1993, published by Orbit in the UK and St. Martin’s Press in the US. The paperback edition included an addendum. The CD-ROM version, styled variously as The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Grolier Science Fiction, contained text updates through 1995, hundreds of book covers and author photos, and author video clips taken from the TV Ontario series Prisoners of Gravity. This CD will not run by itself under Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista, but needs Windows 9x versions (Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME), or an Apple computer. Contributing editor David Langford built his own frontend on the data from the CD-ROM, so Linux and modern Windows users can still have access to the CD multi-media experience.

As of May 2010, all print and CD-ROM editions are out of print. It was announced that future editions will be available exclusively online. The companion volume is The Encyclopedia of Fantasy.

The work has different types of entries:

• Author entries, including entries on writers who have written about science fiction or whose ideas fed into the genre

• Theme entries, on subjects often encountered in science fiction, e.g. telepathy or robots, but also entries about science fiction itself (like the history of science fiction)

• Terminology entries, similar to theme entries, explaining common words used in science fiction (e.g. ion drive) as well as terms used to describe science fiction

• Science fiction in various countries, entries that describe science fiction in the non-English speaking world

• Films. While the focus of the encyclopedia lies with written science fiction, 500 films are mentioned in the 1992 hardcover edition

• Television. Roughly 100 entries about TV series of science fiction interest have been included

• Magazines. This includes the science fiction magazines, but also those pulp magazines that regularly featured sf content and academic magazines about science fiction.

• Fanzines.

• Comics. Entries have science fiction comics, publishers, writers and artists.

• Illustrators. These entries only contain artists whose work is most closely associated with the science fiction genre, mostly book or magazine illustrator.

• Book publishers. Present and past science fiction publishers have their own entries. There are theme entries about publishing.

• Original anthologies. Some original anthology series are given their own entries.

• Awards. Certain science fiction awards have their own entries and there is also a more general entry on them.

• Miscellaneous. Some 30 entries that did not fit elsewhere, including on science fiction organizations, collections, publishing formats and even some character entries.

The first edition of the encyclopedia was awarded the 1980 Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book, and the second edition awarded the Hugo in 1994.