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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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Cosy Catastrophe
A term coined by Brian W Aldiss in Billion Year Spree (1973) to describe the supposedly comforting ambience shed by the sort of Disaster tale told by UK writers like John Wyndham (see also Holocaust; Post-Holocaust). Though later critical work on Wyndham has emphasized the ambiguities and darknesses of his work, the ...
Thompson, Allyn
(? - ) US author of The Azriel Uprising (1982), set after a very brief World War Three has resulted in the Soviet occupation of America, leaving the land devastated; effective military resistance begins only after a decade, under a mysterious leader known only as Juanita. [JC]
Nichol, Nyah
(circa 2004- ) Canadian author whose Young Adult Tempus Trilogy sequence beginning with Broken Shards of Time (2020) follows the trajectory, via Time Travel, of its bereaved young protagonist, who finds in the future that she must confront an inimical version of herself, and come to maturity through this encounter. She is helped by her companions to ...
Vinicoff, Eric
(1951- ) US editor and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "To Live in Alloy Continuity" in Analog for November 1975 with Marcia Martin, writing several short stories with her as well as Spacing Dutchman (1978 chap), a novelette, and the full-length The Weigher (1992), set on a planet whose discovery by humans (see First Contact) ...
Fezandié, Clement
(1865-1959) US businessman, playwright and author based circa 1886-1919 in New York, though he lived and travelled in the Middle East in later life, and died in Belgium. Of his earlier work, The Revenge: A Tragedy in Three Acts (1895 chap) with Rodolphe De L'Escale involves a ghost; and The Sturgis Wager: A Detective Story (1899) as by Edgar Morette features a murderer who dissolves his victims in an sf-like fluid. His sf novel proper, Through the Earth ...
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, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...