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Friday 14 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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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Ekpeki, Oghenechovwe Donald
(? - ) Nigerian editor and author who has also punctuated his name as Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald; he began to publish work of genre interest with "The Witching Hour" in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Stories for 23 April 2018. Most of his work can be understood as Horror, though it is clear that some traditional generic distinctions are "sorted" very differently in the Afrofuturism to ...
Timlin, William M
(1892-1943) UK-born architect, illustrator and author, in South Africa from 1912. The Ship that Sailed to Mars: A Fantasy (graph 1923), his only fiction, is more fantasy than sf, though it does describe in glowing detail the fitting up of a Spaceship and its trip to Mars, where extravagant Monsters are encountered. But Timlin's astonishingly evocative illustrations to the text – for which ...
Visiak, E H
Working name of UK poet, critic (a noted Milton scholar) and author Edward Harold Physick (1878-1972). His fiction – like The Haunted Island (1910) [for subtitles see Checklist], a complex tale featuring ghosts, Magic and piracy – is essentially fantasy, although Medusa: A Story of Mystery, and Ecstasy, & Strange Horror (1929), an almost surreal Fantastic Voyage into unknown seas, gives ...
Flint, Homer Eon
(1889-1924) US author (born Homer Eon Flindt) whose first work was as a screenwriter in 1912, with a script for "The Joke That Spread" (there is no evidence the film was made; at least seven more scripts were sold), and whose work appeared mainly in the Frank A Munsey magazines from the teens of the century. His first sf story was "The Planeteer" (9 March 1918 All-Story Weekly); it deals with sexual rivalry and ...
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 ...