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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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Automata
An automaton is a constructed device with powered working parts, often but not necessarily humanoid, often but not always immobile, never conscious, and generally designed to be seen (unless it is specifically hidden). Because it does not think, it cannot be a slave (see Slavery). As much spectacle as Machine, it has been over the centuries often been presented as a Predictive image of humanity's ...
Merwin, Sam, Jr
(1910-1996) US author, whose name has been given, in error, as W Samuel Merwin or W S Merwin, son of the writer W Samuel Merwin (1874-1936); neither Merwin should be confused with W S Merwin (William Stanley Merwin, 1927- ), the US Poet Laureate for 2011 whose The Folding Cliffs: A Narrative (1998), a novel in verse, treats Hawaiian history in mythopoeic terms. Sam Merwin Jr's first sf story was "The Scourge Below" for ...
Christian, Deborah
(1956- ) US author whose first novel, Mainline (1996), is an sf thriller involving much action in Parallel Worlds; the protagonist possesses a limited Psi-based ability to shift from one reality to another, in the course of committing industrial espionage through "back doors", but if she shifts too far cannot find her way back. Complications ensue when she falls in love, and attempts to keep ...
Rich, Simon
(1984- ) US scriptwriter, journalist and author, first known for his work for the Television series Saturday Night Live beginning in 2007. His short stories and sketches, several of which have appeared in the Shouts and Murmurs section of the New Yorker, intensify an initially slick shaggy-dog literalism into an intense, almost elegiac, "wacky" absurdism (see Absurdist SF), his first ...
Denning, Troy
(1958- ) US author best known for numerous fantasy Ties, mostly in the Dark Sun and Forgotten Realms domains, at least once using the pseudonym or House Name Richard Awlinson for a title in the latter franchise; these are not listed below. Of sf interest are Ties like the Gamebook ...
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 ...