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Wednesday 4 December 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.
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Crown, Peter J
(? - ) Author, perhaps pseudonymous, of the unremarkable, feebly erotic sf novel Father of the Amazons (1961), whose only edition gives Peter J Crown on the title page but "Pete Lewis" on the cover. In the twenty-seventh century a Starship crash-lands on an unexplored planet twenty light-years from Earth; the protagonist, sole survivor, is captured first by "Amazon" women (males are in short supply and mostly ...
Koch, Howard
(1901-1995) US playwright and screenwriter, blacklisted by Hollywood studios in 1951 for his left-wing political views; he is best known in sf circles for scripting the famous Orson Welles Radio adaptation of War of the Worlds (1938), which caused at least some US listeners to panic – though not, it would seem, to the extent conveyed in The ...
Murphy, Warren
(1933-2015) US author, married to Molly Cochran, known largely for the Destroyer sequence, a long series of spoof thrillers, many with Richard Ben Sapir, featuring the Doc Savage-like adventures of Remo Williams, a White man (and avatar of Shiva the Destroyer) trained in the paranormal combat arts of Sinanju, which allow him (for instance) to interpenetrate his body with other matter (see ...
Di Filippo, Paul
(1954- ) US author whose birth and continued residence in Rhode Island places him at the heart of the Boston-Washington megalopolis (see Cities) that has been his typical venue and focus throughout his career, which began with "Falling Expectations" for Unearth in Winter 1977. He has published widely since, with at least 200 stories appearing in a wide range of journals. Beginning with ...
Shannon, John C
(? -? ) UK author of some sf interest for "The Dream of Jacques, the Anarchist" (?? Walsall Advertiser), a Future War vision involving advanced Airships and other newly developed Weapons. The tale appeared, along with some fantasies and weird fiction, in Who Shall Condemn? and Other Stories (coll 1894). Shannon's second collection, ...
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 ...