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Wednesday 19 February 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.
Site updated on 18 February 2025
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Hambly, Barbara
(1951- ) US author, primarily of Fantasy, married to George Alec Effinger (1998-2000), though they remained close until his death in 2002. She entered genre publishing with the Darwath Trilogy fantasy sequence comprising The Time of the Dark (1982), The Walls of Air (1983) and The Armies of Daylight (1983). In these a historian and a biker from Los Angeles ...
Wollheim, Betsy
Working name of Elizabeth R Wollheim (1954- ), US editor and publisher, daughter of Donald A Wollheim; she worked as an associate editor of his DAW Books from 1975, took over the DAW presidency from him when his health began to fail in 1985, and still runs the company as President, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, the last two roles shared with Sheila E Gilbert. On ...
Crommelin, May
Working name of Irish author Mary Henriette de la Cherois Crommelin (1849-1930), mostly in England from around 1885, active as a writer of romantic novels – many of them historicals – from 1874; she worked in at least three London hospitals during World War One. Of some sf interest is The Luck of a Lowland Laddie (1900), an adventure set in South America whose protagonists are chased for several chapters by a carnivorous tree. Despite ...
Kastle, Herbert D
(1924-1987) US author best known outside the genre, who began publishing occasional sf stories with "The York Problem" in If for February 1955. He edited the final two issues of Startling Stories (Summer and Fall 1955). His one sf novel, The Reassembled Man (1964; exp vt Edward Berner Is Alive Again! 1975; vt The Three Lives of Edward Berner 1976) depicts without excessive originality the ...
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 ...