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Saturday 8 February 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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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Dr No
Film (1962). Eon/United Artists. Directed by Terence Young. Written by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, Berkely Mather, based on Dr No (1958) by Ian Fleming. Cast includes Ursula Andress, Sean Connery, Jack Lord and Joseph Wiseman. 105 minutes. Colour. / This UK film was the first in the hugely successful James Bond series, at first loosely based on Fleming's novels and later featuring original stories. The villain, whose ...
Pearson, Ryne Douglas
(1964- ) US screenwriter and author, mostly of thrillers; October's Ghost (1994), like most Technothrillers, is set in an indefinite very Near Future world, in this case during and after the Cuban launch of an atomic missile. Much confusion ensues. [JC]
Publishing
The history of sf publishing is, in its widest sense, the History of SF itself; this entry, however, is concerned with a much more recent phenomenon, the emergence of Genre SF as an identifiable and distinctive category of publishing, and therefore concentrates on US firms. A great amount of sf was published in the UK 1900-1950, but, although some transplanted US genre sf appeared, until about 1950 most UK firms published sf ...
Borden, Mary
(1886-1968) US-born poet and author, in the UK from about 1908, beginning her career with two feminist romans à clef (she had had an affair with Wyndham Lewis), The Mistress of Kingdoms (1912) and Collision (1913), as by Bridget Maclagan. After funding and running a field hospital in France during World War One, which affected her deeply, she published some highly regarded war poems. ...
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 ...