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Monday 9 December 2024
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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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Hurd, Douglas
(1930- ) UK Conservative politician and author, in the former capacity serving his government between 1984 and 1995 at Cabinet level. His sf novels are, perhaps understandably, Near-Future thrillers in which the UK must survive threats from within and without (see Politics). Send Him Victorious (1968) with Andrew Osmond (1938-1999) is the first of the Harvey sequence tracing the ...
Origin of Man
An abundant literature dealing with the remote ancestry of the human species inevitably sprang up in the wake of the theory of Evolution, as propounded by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). T H Huxley (1825-1895), the principal champion of Darwinism, published the classic Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), and Darwin himself wrote The Descent of Man (1871) soon after. The main point at issue was, as Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) put ...
Gautier, Théophile
(1811-1872) French author, a leading figure in the Romantic movement; father of Judith Gautier. Many of his works, including the lushly erotic Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) – which is prefaced by his manifesto for "l'art pour l'art" – are so self-consciously exotic as to qualify as borderline fantasies even though without supernatural content [for fuller entry on Gautier see The ...
Gunn, Neil M
(1891-1973) Scottish author and civil servant, author of many novels, the first being Grey Coast (1926). It and some others – like Morning Tide (1931), The Lost Glen (1932), Second Sight (1940) and The Silver Bough (1948) – contain fantasy elements of interest, reminiscent at times of the Celtic Twilight writings of Fiona MacLeod (William Sharp, 1855-1905) [see The ...
Hekking, Avis
(1878-1945) US author – she may have been born while her parents were temporarily in Europe – resident in UK at some point, perhaps permanently; of her works, A King of Mars (1908) is of interest for its depiction of life on Mars, which is moderately advanced; Communications are soon established between Mars and Earth, via a small globe which contains messages variously conveyed. Hekking may have returned to ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...