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Friday 22 September 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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Barker, Thomas W
(? - ) US author of one sf novel, Five for Infinity (1976), whose multiple protagonists find that they and their Spaceship have inadvertently exceeded the speed of light (see Faster Than Light; Relativity), and find themselves in peril. [JC]
American Science Fiction Magazine
Australian monthly pocketbook magazine, a companion to Selected Science Fiction. 41 issues, May 1952-September 1955, unnumbered and undated 32pp booklets. Published by Malian Press, Sydney; no editor named, but likely to be the publisher, James Mitchell. The word "magazine" was not added to the cover until issue #25 suggesting that this had started as a book series rather than a magazine, and that the publisher had bought book rights rather than ...
Benham, Charles
(1870-1942) UK barrister, famous in his day, and author of The Fourth Napoleon: A Romance (1897), a Near Future tale in which the eponymous ruler becomes ensnared in romance, fatally. [JC]
Fantasy and Science Fiction
The often-used short form of the title of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, often referred to, in this encyclopedia and elsewhere, as F&SF. [PN] links / The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Galactic Central illustrated checklist
Wang Dulu
Writing name of Wang Baoxiang (1909-1977), a Chinese author, largely of detective stories and mysteries, whose most productive period in the late 1930s and 1940s saw some of the definitive works of martial-arts fiction (see Wuxia). He was born to Manchu parents in Beijing, shortly before the abdication of the last emperor would see the suspension of the hereditary stipend paid to aristocrats. As a result, his family and many like it fell ...
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 ...