SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 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 ...
Gunn, James E
(1923-2020) US author, critic and teacher, born in Kansas City and educated at the University of Kansas, where he worked and taught – ultimately as professor of English and journalism and Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, now the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction – from 1958 to 2010, and where he remained Professor Emeritus until his death. Throughout his academic career, he published considerable sf criticism, beginning with excerpts from his MA ...
Schmatz, Pat
(? - ) US author of children's and Young Adult books. Mrs. Estronsky and the U.F.O. (2001) is primarily about growing up but includes a UFO encounter. In Circle the Truth (2007), an irruption of gentle surrealism – the geography of the young protagonist's home changes or seems to change by night – leads to even-handed exploration of faith, ...
Conquest, Joan
(1883-1941) Pseudonym of UK author Mary Eliza Louise Cooke (Mrs Leonard Cooke), born Mary Eliza Gripper and also known as Sister Martin-Nicholson following her first, brief marriage in 1907 to Allen Martin Reuben Nicholson (1883-1915); she married Leonard Cooke in 1915. She is known for floridly euphemistic (though superficially daring) novels of high romance, typical of which are Leonie of the Jungle (1921), whose eponymous heroine escapes the ...
Buckley-Archer, Linda
(1958- ) UK scriptwriter for BBC Radio and Television, and author of the Young Adult Gideon Trilogy beginning with Gideon the Cutpurse (2006), where sf devices – Antigravity and a Time Machine – are utilized in the frame story and throughout, initially to transport its young protagonists ...
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 ...