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Friday 20 May 2022
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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Fantastic
US Digest-size magazine, companion to Amazing Stories; published by Ziff-Davis (Summer 1952-June 1965), Ultimate Publishing Co. (September 1965-October 1980); edited by Howard Browne (Summer 1952-August 1956), Paul W Fairman (October 1956-November 1958), Cele Goldsmith (December 1958-June 1965; as Cele G Lalli from July 1964), Joseph Ross (September 1965-November 1967), Harry Harrison (January-October 1968), Barry N Malzberg (December 1968-April 1969), Ted White (June 1969-January 1979), Elinor ...
Sellings, Arthur
Pseudonym of UK bookseller and author Arthur Gordon Ley (1921-1968), who began publishing sf stories with "The Haunting" for Authentic Science Fiction in October 1953; the best of his output of about thirty tales was assembled in Time Transfer (coll 1956; with five stories cut 1966) and The Long Eureka (coll 1968). In the 1960s his productivity increased; he died (suddenly, of a heart attack) just as he was gaining more and more notice. His first novel, Telepath (1962; vt The Silent Speakers ...
Margrie, William
(1877-1960) UK philosopher and author whose Near Future tale, The Story of a Great Experiment: How England Produced the First Superman (1927), dramatizes his conviction that strictly applied Eugenics was required for the Evolution of the human race; unfortunately for women, their central role is to breed better men. A Capitalist Utopia: A Message for Workers, Politicians, and Employers (1929) is a thinly fictionalized reiteration of the same principles; the earlier The Mighty Heart; A Survey of ...
Harpur, Patrick
(1950- ) UK author in whose first novel, The Serpent's Circle (1985; vt Serpent's Circle 1985), a secret monastic order called The Little Brothers of the Apostles unleashes its old Religion against the Roman Catholic Church; the Little Brothers, a cohort of Secret Masters, do not themselves reappear in Harpur's work, though a sense of arcane empowerment irradiates his presentation of various forms of alchemy. The Rapture (1986) narrows the focus to the fiery spiritual ...
Cast, P C
(1960- ) US author, almost exclusively of Young Adult fantasy, much of it with her daughter Kristin Cast in the House of Night sequence beginning with Marked (2007), set in an Alternate History version of America inhabited by both homo sapiens and "vampyres" (see Vampires); she also collaborated on a sequel series, the House of Night: Other World sequence beginning with Loved (2017). For further details on these series see Kristin Cast. [JC]
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 ...