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Monday 5 June 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.
Site updated on 5 June 2023
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Guthridge, George
(1948- ) US teacher and author who has also used the byline George Florance-Guthridge; he began to publish work of genre interest with "Dolls' Demise" in Analog for July 1976, with many further short stories following in F&SF and other venues. His first novel, Death Mask of Pancho Villa (1987) with Carol Gaskin, is a contribution to the Bantam Books Time Machine ...
Swann, S Andrew
Pseudonym of US author Steven A Swiniarski (1966- ), much of whose sf has been constructed as a loose Future History beginning with the Terran Confederacy: Moreau sequence – comprising Forests of the Night (1993), Emperors of the Twilight (1994) and Specters of the Dawn (1994), all three assembled as Moreau Omnibus (omni 2003), plus ...
Cross, Ronald Anthony
(1937-2006) US author who began publishing sf with "The Story of Three Cities" in New Worlds 6 (anth 1973) edited by Michael Moorcock and Charles Platt; the tale's steely moroseness characterizes a good deal of his work in shorter forms, much of it posthumously assembled as The Ronald Anthony Cross Science Fiction & Fantasy Megapack: 20 Great Tales (coll 2019 ebook). His first novel, ...
Severn, David
Pseudonym of UK author David Storr Unwin (1918-2010), a member of the Unwin publishing family; most of his work was for older children, beginning with Rick Afire! (1942), the first of several nonfantastic titles – the rick here in question being in fact a mundane hayrick – in the Crusoe sequence, which was followed by the Warners series, similarly nonfantastic, perhaps so designed to comfort readers living through World War Two and its aftermath. Severn's ...
Wouk, Herman
(1915-2019) US playwright and author who began his career around 1935 writing Radio dramas. His first published book, The Man in the Trench Coat (coll 1941), contains plays: the first of them, The Man in the Trench Coat (first performed Fall 1940 Barbion Plaza Hotel, New York) is a fantasy whose Jewish protagonist is haunted by a ghost at the beginning of World War Two. A second play of interest, ...
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 ...