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Wednesday 15 January 2025
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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Brookmyre, Christopher
(1968- ) UK author who remains best known for his Jack Parlabane sequence of noir thrillers, beginning with his first novel, Quite Ugly One Morning (1996), and all featuring a very Scottish investigative reporter profoundly at odds with the powers that be. His first tale to contain fantasy elements, Pandaemonium (2009) plays, not entirely successfully, an Equipoisal game with uneasily matched registers of ...
Wagers, K B
(? - ) US author whose Indranan War sequence comprising Behind the Throne (2016) and After the Crown (2016) is a Space Opera set at the heart of a beleaguered Galactic Empire run on matriarchal lines (see Feminism). Their protagonist, a princess who suddenly succeeds to the vastly powerful throne, finds herself enmired in ...
Finland
Sf in Finland, now over a century old, has been diverse, with few clear-cut lines of development. The earliest story was the serial "Muistelmia matkaltani Ruskealan pappilaan uuden vuoden aikoina vuonna 1983" ["Memoirs of My Trip to the Vicarage of Ruskeala around New Year 1983"] (1883, in the newspaper Aura) by Evald Ferdinand Jahnsson. Apart from a few children's stories, early Finnish sf took the form of future, sometimes socialist, Utopias. The Moon was ...
Allbeury, Ted
Working name of UK crime/spy-fiction author Theodore Edward le Bouthillier Allbeury (1917-2005), much of whose fiction takes its authentic tone from the fact that he was in the British secret service during World War Two; he also wrote as Richard Butler and as Patrick Kelly. Some of his spy thrillers edge into Near Future venues, though his only sf novel proper is All Our Tomorrows (1982), which depicts a UK occupied by Russia after it has declined ...
Star Science Fiction Stories
Original-Anthology series (1953-1959) edited by Frederik Pohl, published by Ballantine Books. Star Science Fiction Stories was the first such series, antedating New Writings in SF by eleven years, and in its example very influential. The series was irregular; after Star Science Fiction Stories (anth 1953), ...
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 ...