The Orion Publishing Group has announced that the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction will be “released online later this year by the newly formed ESF, Ltd, in association with Victor Gollancz [Orion’s sf imprint]… and will be available free to all users.” The third edition is being produced by editors John Clute and David Langford, Editor Emeritus Peter Nicholls, and Managing Editor Graham Sleight. Contributing editors include Mike Ashley (magazines), Paul Barnett (artists and illustrators), Jonathan Clements (Japanese and Chinese sf), Nick Lowe (movies), Abigail Nussbaum (television), John Platt (comics), and Adam Roberts (music).
The first edition of the Encyclopedia, edited by Peter Nicholls, “appeared in 1979, and contained over 700,000 words. A second edition, edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, appear in 1993 and contained over 1.3 million words. The beta version of the third edition will contain some 3 million words, including about 12,000 entries and well over 100,000 internal links. The text will be completed, through monthly updates, by the end of 2012.”
Orion Deputy CEO Malcolm Edwards said “We’re delighted to have been able to facilitate the online publication of this monumental and definitive work—more than ever the single, reliable reference source which anyone interested in SF needs. As a contributing editor to that long-ago first edition, it’s a particular pleasure to me to have been able to play a part in making this happen.”
The Encyclopedia’s page is already up, at http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com.