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Wednesday 14 May 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
McCloy, Helen
(1904-1994) US author, mostly of detective novels; she also wrote as Helen Clarkson. Through a Glass, Darkly (1950) is supernatural horror involving Doppelgangers. The Last Day: A Novel of the Day After Tomorrow (April 1958 Satellite Science Fiction; much exp 1959) as by Clarkson is a Near Future sf novel set on an Island off ...
Spencer, William Browning
(1946- ) US author whose first novel, Maybe I'll Call Anna (1990), edges towards but does not embrace the fantastic as its protagonist's obsession with the disturbed eponym of the tale is elaborated in twists of plot and implication that are inherently non-realistic. A play between metaphor and the literal marks, and at points lessens the impact of his second novel, Résumé with Monsters (1994), which shuttles between "simple" ...
Williamson, Jill
(? - ) US author most of whose works are explicitly (and it is to presumed all are in fact) doctrinally consistent with her particular Christian faith (see Religion). Her numerous fantasies [not given in Checklist below] are clear examples of this procedure from conviction. Of sf interest is the Safe Lands sequence beginning with Captives (2013), which describes in ...
Choate, Pearson
(?1886-1960) UK author of some stories before World War One in Top-Notch and elsewhere, of the screenplay for Silas Q Pinch, Sensationalist (1914); and his sole sf novel, The King Who Went on Strike (1924), in which the newly crowned King Alfred the Second of the British Empire goes walkabout in an otherwise unaltered Near Future, and the threat of Communism looms. [JC]
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...