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Friday 18 April 2025
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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Pinsker, Sarah
(1977- ) US singer-songwriter and author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Not Dying in Central Texas" in Nine for June 2012. She initially published only in shorter forms, though prolifically, with more than 50 stories released by 2019. "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss" (1-8 July 2013 Strange Horizons) won a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. She may be best known ...
Hicks, Clifford B
(1920-2010) US author of novels, almost exclusively for children, including the Alvin Fernald series for younger readers; of sf interest is First Boy on the Moon (1959), whose two protagonists (with their frog) go to the Moon, inspiringly. [JC]
Disaster
Cataclysm, natural or manmade, is one of the most popular themes in sf. Tales of Future War and Invasion theoretically belong here, but for convenience are dealt with under those separate headings; see also Climate Change, End of the World, Holocaust, World War One, ...
Leigh, Stephen
(1951- ) US author and musician who began publishing sf with "A Rain of Pebbles" in Analog for April 1977, and who sometimes releases short stories as Lee Stevens. The first novel of his NewEden sequence – Slow Fall to Dawn (1981), Dance of the Hag (1983) and A Quiet of Stone (1984) – brought him into some prominence through its depiction of the attractive feudal culture obtaining upon ...
Pattison, Eliot
(1951- ) US author most of whose fiction consists of thrillers in the Inspector Shan sequence. Ashes of Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America (2011), is set in a Post-Holocaust America twenty-five years after the country has been devastated by international terrorism. An original founder of the village of Carthage – now a harsh pocket Dystopia in which knowledge of the ...
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 ...