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Saturday 12 July 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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Daniels, April
(? - ) US author whose first novel, Dreadnought (2017), which begins the Young Adult Nemesis sequence, is set in a fantasy-hued Alternate World where Superheroes exist; the protagonist, who is transgender (see Transgender SF) by profound inclination and may be at the verge of transitioning, is ...
Donson, Cyril
(1919-1986) UK journalist and author, at one period of his life a schoolmaster at the Royal Naval School, Tal Handaq, Malta. The generic nature of his first story – "Mouse Into Man" in Titbits Magazine in 1940 – has not been established. He claimed to have published more than 6000 pieces, fiction and nonfiction, under various names including Lonny Cordis, Russ Kidd, Via Hartford and Anita Mackin. His known sf is, however, restricted to three routine adventures for ...
Leading Edge, The
US Semiprozine produced by students at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. It began in April 1981 and has generally appeared twice yearly; occasionally (as in 1987 and 2015) there were three issues, and in several other years only a single issue. The Leading Edge is published in a perfect-bound Digest format. It is edited by the students, usually an individual or group for an academic year at a time, and therefore the ...
Burkholz, Herbert
(1929-2006) US author who lived mostly abroad until the last decade of his life; most of his ten novels were detective thrillers like the first, Sister Bear (1969), some in collaboration with Clifford Irving. He is of sf interest for the Sensitives sequence – comprising The Sensitives (1987), Strange Bedfellows (1988) and Brain Damage (1992) – featuring the exploits of a team of Telepathic ...
Cournos, John
(1881-1966) Working name, seemingly legalized, of Russian-born translator, anthologist, poet and author Igor Grigorievich Korshun, which Cournos preferred to render as Johann Gregorevich Korshun to accord more closely to his Ukrainian background; in US or UK from around 1891, in US from 1931. He is of some sf interest for London Under the Bolsheviks: A Londoner's Dream on Returning from Petrograd (1919 chap), which describes ...
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 ...