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Saturday 8 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.
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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Barnes, Arthur K
(1909-1969) US pulp author, known also for his works outside the sf field, who was intermittently active in sf until about 1946, beginning with "Lord of the Lightning" for Wonder Stories in December 1931. His Gerry Carlyle series of Space Opera tales – in which Miss Carlyle and a sidekick hunt down various Aliens, carefully designated as non-sentient, for the London Interplanetary Zoo ...
Otherwise Award
The name under which the former James Tiptree Jr Award for Gender-bending or gender-exploring speculative fiction has been presented since 2020 (for work published in the previous year). Otherwise Award winners are listed below by year of publication, and also for convenience of reference in the winner list of the older Tiptree Award entry. [DRL] Winners 2019: Akwaeke Emezi, ...
Beckett, Chris
(1955- ) Former UK social worker, lecturer on this subject at Anglia Ruskin University since 1990, and author of several sf stories and novels (in addition to solo and co-authored textbooks on social work, not listed below). His first sf appearance was "A Matter of Survival" (October 1990 Interzone); further sales to Interzone and Asimov's followed. Fourteen short sf stories were ...
Barbusse, Henri
(1873-1935) French author, best known for his strongly realistic fiction, especially that concerning World War One. Les enchaînements (1925 2vols; trans Stephen Haden Guest as Chains 1925 2vols) attempts – like many novels from the first third of the century – to present a panoramic vision of mankind's prehistory and history, in this case through the transcendental experiences of a single protagonist who is struck ...
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 ...