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Friday 16 October 2026
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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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising
Videogame (2001). Rage Software. Platforms: Win. / Scripted by Warren {Ellis}, Hostile Waters is notable for the quality of its dialogue and the skill with which the linear plot (see Interactive Narrative) is integrated with the gameplay. The game is set in the twenty-first century, after a global revolution against warmongering capitalists and politicians has established a liberal utopia based on ...
Kenson, Stephen
(1969- ) US Game designer and author whose sf books include several actively told novels Tied to the Shadowrun Role Playing Game, beginning with Shadowrun: Technobabel (1998), plus the less interesting BattleTech: Mech Warrior: Ghost of Winter (1999), set in the Battletech game universe, and ...
Fraser, David
(1920-2012) UK soldier who served in World War Two and became a senior general in the UK armed forces in the postwar period; in retirement, from a Conservative position, he opposed the second war with Iraq as unjustified, and "unwise, to the point of insanity". He began publishing fiction and nonfiction around 1980, his best-known fiction being the Hardrow Chronicles, contemporary military tales in several volumes beginning with Adam Hardrow (1982). Of sf interest is ...
Karl, Jean E
(1927-2000) US editor and author, important in the former capacity for her founding of Atheneum Children's Books, where she edited Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea sequence and Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, and many other titles. Her nonfiction titles – such as From Childhood to Childhood: Children's Books and Their Creators (John Day Co, 1970) – were usually based on her experiences ...
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 ...