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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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Hovorka, Robert L, Jr
(1955- ) US author whose first sf novel, the Space Opera Derelict (1988), is reminiscent of Alien (1979) in its reliance on Horror in SF conventions. [JC]
Lensman
Board and counter Wargame (1969). Designed by Philip Pritchard. / Lensman is the earliest known sf Wargame to be made available commercially. Like Spacewar (1962), it was inspired by E E Smith's Lensman books. Unlike that game, and despite its lack of authorization from Smith's estate, it is intimately involved with its source material, and ...
Crampton, Patricia
(1925-2016) Indian-born translator, in UK from 1930. As chair of the Translators Association, she contributed importantly to the argument that translators were essential contributors to the world of literature in general, and that in specific they should not be asked to work for flat rates, without hope of royalties, or of sharing revenues from the PLR (Public Lending Right) after it was created in the UK in 1979. After working as a translator in 1947 at the Nuremberg trials of Germans accused ...
Gilbert, Zoe
(? - ) UK academic and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Time Machine" in Luna Station Quarterly for December 2011. A sophisticated use of interacting modes within the enabling frame of Fantastika consistently marks her longer fiction. In her first novel, Folk (2018), an isolated Island houses a complex community whose interactions, as told through ...
Spinrad, Norman
(1940- ) US author, born in New York – where he set some impressive fiction – but resident in France for many years; married to N Lee Wood (1990-2005). He began publishing sf with "The Last of the Romany" in Analog for 1963, assembled with other early work as The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde (coll 1970), the title story being among the most successful of the attempts made by various ...
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 reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...