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Tuesday 21 March 2023
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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XYZ
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? -? ) of The Vril Staff (1891), an unauthorized Sequel by Other Hands to Edward Bulwer Lytton's The Coming Race (1871), in which vril is the Power Source for a vastly effective Weapon, whose wielder initially eliminates Indians in the ...
Smollett, Tobias
(1721-1771) Scottish medical practitioner (he did not gain a degree), journalist, translator, poet and author whose reputation has always suffered – certainly among the more dignified critics – through the sometimes distorting savagery of his Satire, a saeva indignatio he shares with other eighteenth century authors like Jonathan Swift. His first significant work of fiction in this vein, ...
Boutet, Frédéric
(1874-1941) French author, much of whose work contributed to the Decadent movement in France; it is of some very general interest as providing examples of the conte cruel, and in its occasional use of the topoi of Fantastika [see Checklist for relevant titles], the stories assembled in The Antisocial Man and Other Strange Stories (coll trans Brian Stableford 2013) tending to illustrate this aspect of ...
Dahlin, Allyson
(? - ) US author whose first novel, Cake Eater (2022), aspires to a comic retelling, in an Alternate History future a millenium hence, of the "romantic" life and love experiences of Marie Antoinette (1755-1793). [JC]
Burtis, Thomson
(1896-1971) US author, several of whose stories were filmed; his novels are usually Young Adult tales involving derring-do in the air, the best-known probably being the Rex Lee sequence beginning with Rex Lee, Gypsy Flyer (1929), none of these titles venturing into the fantastic. Some of his short stories, like "Air Raiders" (February 1925 American Boy) or "Barrett of the Air Police" (January 1928 ...
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 ...