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Wednesday 16 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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Hoskin, Rik
(? - ) Author who under the House Name James Axler has contributed to the very lengthy Deathlands sequence of Ruined Earth sf and – several times – to the also long and roughly similar in background Outlanders sequence. Both are discussed in more detail in the entry for James Axler. [DRL]
Pearson, Drew
Working name of US newspaper and radio columnist Andrew Russell Pearson (1897-1969), famed for effective though sometimes ill-researched muckraking attacks on usually deserving targets; of sf interest is The President (1970), set in a Near Future America where Paranoia and political expediency and assassination attempts have created a Dystopian land, which President Hannaford, after winning ...
Blacker, Terence
(1948- ) UK author, mostly for Young Adult readers and for younger children, active from about 1984; he is best known for his Ms Wiz stories for younger children, and has also written adult novels. Of sf interest is The Angel Factory (2001), in which the young protagonist's parents turn out to be Aliens who have adopted him for reasons not entirely to his liking. [JC]
Dying Earth
A not uncommon category of sf story which has now developed its own melancholy mythology. Since the Sun is invariably moribund if not extinguished, this could also be called the dying-sun theme. Jack Vance gave this Far Future subgenre its name in The Dying Earth (coll of linked stories 1950). Important precursors are the section of H G Wells's ...
Highwayman, The
US tv series (1987-1988). Glen A Larson Productions/20th Century Fox Television for NBC-TV. Created by Glen A Larson, also executive producer. Directors included Rob Bowman, Douglas Heyes and Larry Shaw. Writers included Larson, Burt Pearl and Steven L Sears. Cast includes Jane Badler, Mark "Jacko" Jackson, Sam J Jones and Tim Russ. Narrator: William Conrad (uncredited). One 90-minute pilot film plus nine 60-minute episodes. Colour. / Sometime in the ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...