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Tuesday 14 January 2025
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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Yolen, Jane
(1939- ) US author who began publishing poems and articles when still in college, and who first came to notice with books for children, the first of many being Pirates in Petticoats (1963). Of her circa 365 titles to date, many of which have won awards in her field, most are for children (see listing below for some of these), many of them being picture books for younger children; most of her adult fiction, of which she has written relatively little, ...
Jonson, Ben
(1572-1637) UK poet, actor and playwright, after Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William Shakespeare the pre-eminent dramatist of his era, active from the late 1590s till the year of his death. He was most famous for his astute and often highly satirical comedies, most notably Volpone (1605-1606), The Alchemist (1610) which satirized the gullibility of a public ready to accept any pseudoscientific nostrum, and ...
Whitaker, David
(1928-1980) UK Television scriptwriter and editor who as the first story editor of Doctor Who oversaw the writing of this series' first 51 episodes (1963-1964) and contributed several scripts of his own in the mid- to late 1960s. Whitaker wrote the first Doctor Who novelization, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (1964; vt Doctor Who and the Daleks 1973). This well-crafted ...
Weston, Peter
(1943-2017) UK sf fan and editor, active initially in the 1960s and 1970s. He published the well-regarded critical Fanzine Speculation 1963-1973 (originally titled Zenith), contributed a column to Vector 1966-1968 as by Malcolm Edwards (not to be confused with Malcolm Edwards), organized the three sf Speculation Conferences in Birmingham (1970-1972), was among the ...
Pereira Mendes, H
(1852-1937) UK-born rabbi, academic and author, in the USA from 1877, where he wrote prolifically in many genres. Looking Ahead: Twentieth Century Happenings (1899) tells of various socialist upheavals, beginning in the Near Future and moving forward, which lead to several world wars and are defeated, in the end, only by an alliance of theocratical Christians and Jews, which also establishes in Palestine a Jewish homeland ruled by a descendant of ...
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 ...