SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 1 April 2023
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 29 March 2023
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Thomas, D M
(1935-2023) UK poet and author who made use of sf themes most explicitly in such early Poetry as "The Head-Rape" in New Worlds for March 1968 and the two-part "Computer 70: Dreams & Lovepoems" (March-April 1970 New Worlds), a sequence assembled with other poetry of interest in Logan Stone (coll 1970); or the later "S. F." (in The Umbral Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, anth ...
FTL
Initialism, often employed in sf Terminology, for Faster Than Light – as for example in FTL Spaceship. Fritz Leiber's use of the term in "The Enchanted Forest" (October 1950 Astounding) may be the first printed appearance. [DRL] see also: Sublight. /
Halliday, Mags L
Working name of (apparently) Liz Halliday (1971- ), used because another author with a similar name – Liz Holliday – has also contributed work to the Doctor Who universe. Halliday's Tie, Doctor Who: History 101 (2002), in the Doctor Who: New Adventures subset, features the presence of Eric Blair (George Orwell) in the Spanish Civil War, where surreal displacements between ...
Gay, J Drew
(1846-1890) UK journalist, politician, explorer and author in whose The Mystery of the Shroud: A Tale of Socialism (1887) a fog gives a socialist secret society the chance to conquer England in the Near Future, but the chance is muffed. [JC]
Norwood, Warren C
(1945-2005) US bookseller and author who has normally published as Warren Norwood, sometimes as Warren C Norwood; due to a publisher's error, some titles were published as by Warren G Norwood. After a number of years in bookselling, during which period he published some not particularly distinguished poetry, Norwood began his sf career with the Windhover Tapes sequence – The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices (1982), The Windhover Tapes: #2: Flexing the Warp ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...