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Friday 20 September 2024
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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Smith, George Albert
(1864-1959) Pioneering UK filmmaker (see Cinema), sometimes referred to as G A Smith. Initially a stage hypnotist and part of an act with Douglas Blackburn involving mind-reading (see Telepathy) and second sight (see ESP), Smith joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1883. He worked with Edmund Gurney, who was investigating Hypnotism, telepathy and suchlike: Smith, along with ...
Littell, Philip
(1868-1943) US author of a Satire replaying the story of Adam and Eve in modern dress. Woman is intrinsically more frivolous than Man, etc (see Feminism; Women in SF). [JC]
Verrill, A Hyatt
(1871-1954) US naturalist, explorer and author, most of whose circa 105 books were nonfiction; he contributed a science column to American Boy. He also wrote juveniles, of which the Boy Adventurers sequence is of some sf interest, most of them being Lost Race tales; relevant titles, all set in differing lost regions of British Guiana, include The Boy Adventurers in the Forbidden Land (1922), ...
Costain, Meredith
(1955- ) Australian author of a large number of books for children and Young Adult readers. Those few with any sf or fantastic content tend to be light-hearted; her attentions are focused elsewhere. [JC]
Guo Xiaolu
(1973- ) Chinese-born author and filmmaker, in London from 2002, whose early work occasionally touches on sf (see Equipoise). Born after the Cultural Revolution and graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, her prose presents a twenty-first century that both is and isn't the wondrous future promised by the earlier sf of China. Guo's work can hence be parsed as China's answer to the "Gernsback Continuum" espoused by ...
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 ...