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Friday 7 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 ...
Cooney, Eleanor
(? - ) US author who may be best known for the nonfiction Death in Slow Motion (2003), about the slow decline from Alzheimer's disease of her mother, the novelist Mary Durant (1922-2008). Her fiction comprises a series of historical novels about China, some in collaboration with Daniel Altieri. Of some sf interest is their Shangri-La: The Return to the World of Lost Horizon (1996), a ...
Dick Tracy
US Comics character, created in 1931 by Chester Gould, who has long appeared in daily comic strips as well as books, comic books, radio, cinema, and television programmes; after Gould retired in 1977, several other artists have continued the strip. In his first three decades, Tracy's exploits as an urban detective fighting colourful criminals (see Crime and Punishment) were realistic, though one item of mild sf interest was ...
Something Else
UK Semiprozine, three issues (Spring 1980, Winter 1980, Spring 1984), A4 format, published and edited by Charles Partington from Manchester. Print run was between 1000 and 1500 copies. This was a short-lived but brave attempt by Partington, who had previously edited Alien Worlds, to continue the New Worlds tradition. Many of the stalwarts of ...
Erlich, Richard D
(1943- ) US academic and critic who took his PhD in English Language and Literature at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), moving in 1971 to Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), where he remained until his retirement in 2006 as Professor of English. His first essay of sf interest was "Strange Odyssey: From Dart to Ardrey to Kubrick and Clarke" (May 1976 Extrapolation 17.2), which centred on the use in ...
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 ...