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Sunday 14 June 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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Miéville, China
(1972- ) UK author most of whose early work can be understood in terms of Dark Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] or horror (see Horror in SF), but who has become a central figure in early twenty-first-century Fantastika. Beginning with his first novel, King Rat (1998), his narratives constantly feed upon ...
Hawkins, Ward
(1912-1990) US author who spent most of his career producing Westerns, usually in collaboration with his elder brother, John Hawkins (1910-1978), who was the author of the sf "Ark of Fire" (3-10 April 1938 The American Weekly). Ward Hawkins began publishing work of fantastic interest with "Men Must Die" in Thrilling Wonder Stories for April 1939, though he produced only a few sf tales at this time. In the 1980s he wrote ...
Full Spectrum
US Original-Anthology series published by Bantam Books since 1988, created by Lou Aronica, five issues: Full Spectrum (anth 1988), edited by Aronica with Shawna McCarthy; Full Spectrum 2 (anth 1989), edited by Aronica with Pat LoBrutto, McCarthy and Amy Stout, ...
Amazing Forries
US letter-size saddle-stapled Media Magazine. Publisher: Metropolis Publications. Editor: Forrest J Ackerman. One issue, dated October 2026 on the cover; published November 1976. / Subtitled "This is Your Life / Forrest J Ackerman", this one-off autobiographical celebration was reportedly financed in part by James Warren of Warren Publishing, though issued by Ackerman himself. ...
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 ...