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Friday 22 September 2023
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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Morgan, Joseph
(1671-1742) US minister, entrepreneur and author in various modes. His The History of the Kingdom of Basaruah [for subtitle see Checklist] (1715; cut vt Brief History of the Country of Humanity [for subtitle see Checklist] 1728), as by A Traveller in Basaruah, stands as the first prose fiction written and published in what would become the USA. Though more important as an allegory than as an example of Proto SF, Basaruah does ...
Godfrey, Hollis
(1874-1936) US engineer, academic and author in whose sf novel, The Man Who Ended War (1908), the inventor of a radioactive metal-disintegrating Ray (an early nuclear weapon of sorts, though not the first in world literature; see Robert Cromie) threatens to destroy the world's warships from a secret location, one by one, if the great powers refuse to disarm. They initially resist and he carries out his threat, though the ...
Roberts, W Adolphe
(1886-1962) Jamaican editor, poet, journalist and author, in USA 1904-1949, initially involved in American literary life, who also wrote as by Stephen Endicott; his first book, Pierrot Wounded (coll 1919) was a volume of poems inspired by his apparently unfulfilled relationship with Edna St Vincent Millay; in his later career he became a significant advocate for Jamaican independence. He is credited as having written the first African American mystery novel in English, ...
Television Anthology Series
The Television anthology series, with each segment presenting a new genre story or adaptation of some existing story, has frequently been attempted with varying degrees of success. The term is also applied to the format in which a regular slot with its own title hosts multiple series or serials, as with Cliffhangers (1979) below. Series which receive full or cross-reference entries in this encyclopedia are, in chronological order: / ...
Baker, William Elliott Smith
(1830-1900) US author, usually on Economics. His anonymous The Battle of Coney Island; Or, Free-Trade Overthrown: A Scrap of History Written in 1900: By an Eyewitness (1883) is a Near Future Satire protesting against free trade; during the course of the tale, New York suffers an Invasion at the hands of the Republic of Yucatan. Though ...
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 ...