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Friday 18 April 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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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Pennington, Bruce
(1944- ) British artist. After artistic training at the Beckenham School of Art and Ravensbourne College of Art, Pennington did some commercial art before beginning his sf career in 1967 with a cover for Robert A Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; text restored 1990), showing a naked man and woman partially immersed in water; he also did the covers for a series of republished books by Ray ...
Clare, Cassandra
Pseudonym of Iranian-born author Judith Rumelt (1973- ), in the US from an early age, who signed as Cassandra Claire for early fan fiction; she began to publish work of genre interest with "The Girl's Guide to Defeating the Dark Lord" in Turn the Other Chick (anth 2004) edited by Esther Friesner, but soon focused on longer book-length titles. She is best-known for two linked series of ...
Frith, R J
(? - ) UK author whose sf novel, The Nemesis List (2010), is set in a relaxed Space Opera universe full of merchant traders and complaisant planetary authorities; her protagonist, a freelance freighter captain, must transfer a multiple murderer, whose IQ has been experimentally enhanced by the scientists he has murdered, to a planet where he can be taken care of (see ...
Dain, Alex
Pseudonym of US therapist and author Alex Lukeman (1941- ), who has published under his own name several books on the nature of dreams and the ongoing thriller series The Project, which relates the exploits of the eponymous secret US counter-terrorism unit, beginning with White Jade (2011). Lukeman used the Alex Dain byline for his first novel only: The Bane of Kanthos (1969 dos), which is ...
Smith, Clint
(? - ) US technical writer and author of Infusion (2004), a tale combining aspects of Space Opera – two Consortium planets band together to send an expedition to Earth to plunder it of its "dattan", a resource needed back home – and Ecological fiction: the approaching crisis is seen through from the perspective of a galactic team whose task it is to prevent the ...
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 ...