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Tuesday 12 November 2024
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.
Site updated on 11 November 2024
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Spencer, Colin
(1933- ) UK painter and author, active in the latter capacity from 1955, his short stories and novels almost never edging into the fantastic. Of sf interest is Asylum (1966), a Satire set in very Near Future Britain seen in Absurdist SF terms as exactly an asylum, one in which – in a manner similar to the Theatre of the Absurd – extravagant behaviours are ...
Gould, F J
(1855-1938) UK author of numerous works in which he espoused an agnostic philosophy. His sf novel, The Agnostic Island (1891), a very lightly fictionalized satire on Utopia, exposes some Christian missionaries to a society which threatens their beliefs. [JC]
Butler, Ewan
(1911-1974) UK journalist (The Times, Daily Mail) and author, son of Sir Harold Butler, a politician who founded the International Labour Office in Geneva; educated at Eton; served in World War Two. In his supernatural thriller, "Talk of the Devil" (1948), the Devil visits England with foul consequences. Of sf interest is his Hitler Wins tale, ...
Faber, Michel
(1960- ) Dutch/Australian/Scottish author, born in Holland, raised in Australia from the age of seven, resident from 1993 in Scotland, where much of his fiction is located; partner from 2016 of Louisa Young. He is best known for The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), a blockbuster novel set in a nonfantastic Victorian London but narrated as though to a time traveller from the future; a nonfantastic collection, ...
Streib, Daniel T
(1928-1996) US journalist and author, who also wrote as by F Faragut Jones, Jonathan Schofield and Lee Davis Willoughby; much of his work was for children. His first novel, Operation: Countdown (1970) with Robert Page Jones, is a Near Future tale involving sabotage in near space; his Counter Force sequence beginning with Counter Force (1983) comprises a set of Technothriller tales with a strong ...
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 ...