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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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Lawrence, Josephine
(1889-1978) US editor and author, active and prolific from about 1915 in both capacities, concentrating in her early career on work for younger children, soon contributing tales for girls, under various names, to the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Though much of this material may verge on the fantastic, she is of sf interest primarily for an adult novel, Not a Cloud in the Sky (1964), a Dystopian vision of a ...
McDonough, Alex
A House Name used for the Sharecropped Scorpio sequence packaged by Byron Preiss for Ace Books in the 1990s. All volumes save the first – whose author is unknown – are by Janet Fox. [JC/DRL]
Sword and Sorcery
This term – describing a subgenre of Fantasy embracing adventures with swordplay and Magic – is usually attributed to Fritz Leiber, who is said to have coined it in 1960 in response to Michael Moorcock's request for such a capsule description; but the kind of story it refers to is much older than that. (Other terms that overlap with "sword-and-sorcery" are ...
Stanley, Dorothy
(1855-1926) UK painter who worked as Dorothy Tennant and author, married to the explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904). In her World War One novel, Miss Pym's Camouflage (1918), an essentially fantasy device – Invisibility at will, without any explanation – is applied with considerable wit as Miss Perdita Pym demonstrates her powers to the War Office (see ...
Quiet, Please
Radio drama series (1947-1949). Created by Wyllis Cooper (see Radio) for the Mutual Broadcasting Network, then the ABC Radio Network. Written mainly by Cooper. Announcer: Ernest Chappell. 106 30-minute episodes. / The innocent-seeming title disguised what was often one of the most frightening radio anthology series ever broadcast in the US, almost always starring announcer Chappell (1903-1983). While the great majority of the ...
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...