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Wednesday 15 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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Miln, Louise Jordan
(1864-1933) UK author about whose identity there has been some confusion. Her surname has been spelled "Milne"; the British Library lists at least one of her books as by James Miln of Toronto; "Louise Jordan Miln" has been identified as a pseudonym of the British actor George Crichton Miln (1851-? ), who was her husband. The truth is probably that she wrote the books signed with her name, and that she was otherwise known as Mrs George Crichton Miln. She is the author of several ...
Vinge, Vernor
(1944-2024) US author and professor of mathematics at San Diego State University until 2000, when he retired to write full-time; married to Joan D Vinge 1972-1979. He began publishing sf with "Apartness" for New Worlds in June 1965, and appeared fairly regularly in Analog, his best early work being collected in True Names and Other Dangers (coll 1987), which contains ...
Television Anthology Series
The Television anthology series, with each segment presenting a new genre story or adaptation of some existing story, has frequently been attempted with varying degrees of success. The term is also applied to the format in which a regular slot with its own title hosts multiple series or serials, as with Cliffhangers (1979) below. Series which receive full or cross-reference entries in this encyclopedia are, in chronological order: / ...
Lombardi, Tom
(? - ) US author of a Young Adult novel, My Summer on Earth (2008), in which an Alien named Clint is sent to Earth to persuade another alien, disguised as a film actor whose first name is Clint, to come back home; the tale is spoofish but frequently sharp. [JC]
Bahnson, Agnew H, Jr
(1915-1964) US author, textile-machinery manufacturer and speculative thinker much involved in problems of Gravity; fittingly, his Near-Future political thriller, The Stars Are too High (1959), features a Scientific Hoax in which fake Aliens with a real gravity-driven ship try to bring peace to the world. After his death in a plane crash, the University of ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...