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Wednesday 4 October 2023
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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Schätzing, Frank
(1957- ) German author initially best known for Der Schwarm (2004; trans Sally-Ann Spencer as The Swarm 2007), a vivid expression of Horror in SF: beginning off Peru, ocean currents begin actively to assault and drown humans, governed by a vast Hive Mind dwelling Under the Sea (see Gaia) whose ...
Clowes, W Laird
(1856-1905) UK author who specialized in naval history, sometimes controversially (usually writing as Nautilus); a nonfiction study, Black America: A Study of the Ex-Slave and his Master (1891), predicts a twentieth-century race war. His work of sf interest is exclusively nautical: The Great Naval War of 1887 (1886 St James Gazette; 1887 chap) with Commander C N Robinson, both anonymous, detailedly depicts a French naval victory in a ...
Ballard, Isaac Fowler
(1826-1897) UK tax officer ("supervisor of excise") and author of The Prophetic Future of the Empire of Great Britain: Dedicated to her Royal and Imperial Majesty the Queen (1871 chap), in which the Battle of Dorking scenario is taken to predict a Future History in which Britain triumphs. [JC]
Guerrier, Simon
(1976- ) UK scriptwriter and author, mostly of material in the Doctor Who universe, including his first story of genre interest, "Libra: The Switching" in Short Trips: Zodiac (anth 2002) edited by Jacqueline Rayner; his Doctor Who novels include Doctor Who: The Time Travellers (2005) and Doctor Who: The Pirate Loop (2007). Some of his anthologies are of ...
Martin, Troy Kennedy
(1932-2009) Scottish-born scriptwriter, in England from childhood, best known for non-fantastic work such as the BBC police procedural series Z Cars (1962-1978), which he created and for which he supplied scripts intermittently; brother of Ian Kennedy Martin. Some of the Satirical nihilism of his script for the film Kelly's Heroes (1970), directed by Brian G Hutton, disappeared when the studio ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...