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Sunday 8 December 2024
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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Stunner
Traditional item of sf Terminology, third in the trio of classic Genre SF hand Weapons: the others are the Blaster and the sometimes synonymous Disintegrator. The Star Trek phaser can famously be set to "stun", but the device was already old in sf. Personal "electric stunners" appear in C M ...
Huang Fan
Pseudonym of Huang Xiaozhong (1950- ) a Chinese author whose occasional experiments in sf, Equipoise and the absurd have made him a distinct and distinguished voice in modern Taiwanese fiction. A former engineer and factory manager, he turned to writing full-time in the 1980s, except for a prolonged hiatus from 1993-2003 when he was secluded in a Buddhist monastery. He came to prominence with the non-sf ...
Cramer, Kathryn
(1962- ) US critic and editor; daughter of John Cramer, married to David G Hartwell from 1997 until his death in 2016, who began publishing fiction of genre interest with "Forbidden Knowledge" in Mathenauts (anth 1987) edited by Rudy Rucker; she has been involved in various capacities with the ...
Reid, C Lestock
(1888-1954) India-born UK army officer and author, in active service during World War One. His adventure novels include The Trail of Pharaoh's Treasure: A Romance of Africa (1924); Sons of Solomon (1931), a Lost Race tale also set in Africa, sadly defaced for modern readers by its racism (see Race in SF); and Dark Destiny (1936). ...
Enton, Harry
(1854-1927) US medical doctor and author who began writing dime novels as early as 1874; of Dime-Novel SF interest are the first three Frank Reade stories, all under the house name "Noname", beginning with The Steam Man of the Plains; Or, the Terror of the West (28 February 1876 The Boys of New York; 1896), all of them being very early examples of the Edisonade, each featuring ...
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 ...