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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.
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O'Nair, Mairi
Pseudonym of Canadian-born author Constance May Evans (1888-1982), in the UK from before World War One, who specialized in romance novels (at least 100 of them) between 1932 and 1971, under her own name and as O'Nair. Of sf interest is The Girl with the X-Ray Eyes (coll of linked stories 1935), featuring a young woman detective with the power of Telepathy, which helps her solve her cases. [JC]
Dr Yen Sin
US Pulp magazine, three bimonthly issues, May/June-September/October 1936. Published by Popular Publications; edited by Edythe Seims working to Rogers Terrill. Dr Yen Sin was a follow-up to an earlier Popular title, The Mysterious Wu Fang, itself intended to capitalize on the popularity of Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu-Manchu; in fact the cover of #1 ...
Lerner, Edward M
(1949- ) US scientist involved in aerospace and information technologies such as Bell Labs, and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "What a Piece of Work is Man" in Analog for 1991, followed later the same year by his first novel, Probe (1991), a Technothriller in which an Alien Spaceship discovered in the solar system ...
Cooper, Merian C
(1893-1973) US screenwriter, film director and producer best known for directing and producing (with Ernest B Schoedsack) the original King Kong (1933), based on a story by himself and Edgar Wallace. Both Cooper and Wallace are given title credit in the resulting novel Tie: King Kong: Conceived by Edgar Wallace and Merian C Cooper: Novelization by Delos W Lovelace (1932) by Delos W ...
Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall
(1931- ) US anthropologist and author whose expeditions to Africa between 1950 and 1956 resulted in her first book, the nonfiction The Harmless People (1959), about the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Her two novels are of interest as intense examples of Prehistoric SF, where speculations about Homo sapiens that cannot be claimed to bear the warrant of professional testability serve as ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...