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Friday 29 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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Drayton, Henry S
(1840-1923) US medical doctor and author whose Lost World novel, In Oudemon: Reminiscences of an Unknown People, by an Occasional Traveler (1900), features a 100-year-old English colony within a beneath South America, which is technologically advanced, telepathic, socialist and Christian. [JC]
Powlik, James
(? - ) Canadian oceanographer and author, whose first novel, Sea Change (1999), sees the oceans threatened by mutated micro-organisms (see Horror in SF; Mutants); second tale dealing with the threatened oceans of the world, Meltdown (2000), is a Technothriller in which a source of deadly radiation under the Arctic may bring about ...
Hoornaert, Edward
(1981- ) Belgian author, now in the USA, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Devil, Devil" for On Spec in 2000; and whose sf novel, The Trial of Tompa Lee (2005), is, unusually for Military SF, a courtroom drama, set on an Alien planet. The spunky young protagonist manages to defend herself in the end against unjust charges. [JC]
Kennard, Luke
(1981- ) UK poet, critic, playwright and author, best known under the initial heading, his first poetry collection, The Solex Brothers (coll 2005 chap), being given an Eric Gregory Award, and his later work also conspicuously recognized. His poems tend to an acerbic surreality, with ghostlike figures occupying quasi-narrative niches, mockingly. Kennard is of sf interest for his first novel, The Transition (2017), set in a ...
Fuller, Sam
(1912-1997) US screenwriter, director and author, variously active from the mid 1930s, most famous for his thirty films as director beginning with I Shot Jesse James (1947). He is of sf interest for his second novel, Test Tube Baby (1936), whose protagonist, a scientific prodigy, may have devised an experiment which successfully creates life in a test tube. But his life divides into two incompatible parts, the scientist and the lover; so violent are the transitions ...
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 ...