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Wednesday 17 August 2022
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.
Site updated on 17 August 2022
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Donnelly, H Grattan
(1850-1931) Irish-born playwright and author, in US from early manhood; he wrote three sf novels: The Coming Crown (1880 chap), a Satire on tendencies he detected for the American presidency to become a form of monarchy in the Near Future; '84, a Political Revelation (1883 chap), which predicts further postbellum turmoils; and The Stricken Nation (1890 chap), depicting a Future War in which an unprepared America is devastated by a ruthless Great Britain (see Invasion). The cover illustration ...
Tremblay, Paul
(1971- ) US author mostly of horror and fantasy who began to publish work of genre interest with "The King Bee" (in The Dead Inn, anth 2001, edited by Shane Ryan Staley), which was assembled in In the Mean Time (coll 2010), some of the stories being sf (see Horror in SF; Fantastika). His PI Mark Genevich sequence, featuring a private eye with narcolepsy, is nonfantastic. Of sf interest is City Pier: Above and Below (coll of linked stories 2007 chap), each tale set in the ...
Young Adult
Young Adult or YA sf, like Children's SF, is named for and defined by its target audience. The YA label is sometimes applied to any sf with young adult protagonists, but this approach is often problematic. For instance, Nnedi Okorafor's Binti novellas, starting with Binti (2015) have been included on many recommended YA sf lists, but Okorafor insists that they are not YA. This problem is more common in the case of late twentieth century books that were originally written for a general ...
Barnes, Jonathan
(1979- ) UK author who also writes as J S Barnes; the Somnambulist sequence beginning with The Somnambulist (2007) is a complex detective thriller set in a Steampunk version of Late Victorian London, congenially evoking some of the affirming affect created by Tim Powers in The Anubis Gates (1984) and other tales. The stage magician Edward Moon and his giant mute assistant, who is known as The Somnambulist, are drawn into the darker side of the great City. In the second ...
Pierre, DBC
Pseudonym of Australian author Peter Finlay (1961- ), the initials of whose pseudonym stand for Dirty But Clean, a reference to the author's adventurous but troubled early life; these early experiences are surreally unpacked in his first novel, Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death (2003), a gonzo Bildungsroman which gestures at the fantastic. Conjoined twins in an almost Near Future, culturally voided London grapple with a savagely privatized ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...