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Saturday 11 April 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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, D S
(? - ) UK author whose sf debut was the novel The Bend in the Sky (2012), a humorous Multiverse-traversing romp in which our universe must be saved by unlikely non-heroes from destruction by a psychopathic tyrant-Villain; there is some enjoyable incidental inventiveness, though perhaps over-much reliance on comic names distantly reminiscent of Douglas ...
SFWA Grand Master Award
A lifetime achievement Award presented to living authors (only) by the Nebula Committee of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, as part of the annual Nebula Awards presentation for work appearing in the previous year. The Grand Master Award was inaugurated in 1975, when the first presentation was made to Robert A Heinlein. In theory this honour is awarded only from ...
Cook, Glen
(1944- ) US author who began his sf career with orthodox stories like his first, "Song from a Forgotten Hill" for Clarion (anth 1971), edited by Robin Scott Wilson, and with the sf novel The Heirs of Babylon (1972), in which an authoritarian religious government takes over in the Post-Holocaust era. However, he soon became best known for his high ...
Ellanby, Boyd
Joint pseudonym of Lyle Gifford Boyd (1907-1982) and her husband William Clouser Boyd (1903-1983), the latter a professor of immunochemistry at Boston University, Massachusetts. They began to publish work of genre interest with Category Phoenix (May 1952 Galaxy; 2010 ebook), continuing to a total of fourteen stories in various contemporary SF Magazines until 1958, as well as a small number of essays for such magazines ...
Doppelgangers
Literally, "double-walkers". Very broadly, doppelgangers begin to make significant appearances in the early nineteenth century, in the works of authors like E T A Hoffmann, whose use of these figures was central to the concept of the Uncanny (or Unheimlich) in the works of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) (see also Mysterious Stranger). To meet one's own supernatural double (or Scots "fetch") was traditionally an unlucky ...
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 ...