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Monday 13 January 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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Cross, John Keir
(1914-1967) Scottish editor and author, beginning with Radio scripts for the BBC from before World War Two, his best known series, which he edited and contributed to, being the radio Horror anthology show The Man in Black (8 episodes 1949 BBC), for which he adapted stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Robert Louis Stevenson and ...
Buell, Mary E
(? -? ) US poet and author, whose The Sixth Sense; Or, Electricity, a Story for the Masses (1891) explains the nature of the energies that govern the entire world through electricity; that form of electricity here described as Magnetism (see Power Sources; Scientific Errors) heals the sick. [JC]
Waberi, Abdourahman A
(1965- ) Djiboutian journalist and author, mostly in France from around 1985; Le Pays sans ombre (coll 1994; trans Jeanne Garane as The Land Without Shadows 2005) assembles nonfantastic stories set in his native land. He is of sf interest for Aux États-Unis d'Afrique: Roman (2006; trans David and Nicole Ball as In the United States of Africa 2009), an Alternate World tale ...
Dent, John Charles
(1841-1888) UK-born author in Canada from early childhood, of whose The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales (coll 1888) the title story – "The Gerrard Street Mystery" (May 1877 Belford's Monthly) – is a tale of Precognition. Of the other three long tales, "The Haunted House on Duchess Street" is a ghost story. [JC]
Harben, Will N
(1858-1919) US author, most of whose work variously depicts life in the South, though at least three are detective novels featuring the sleuth Minard Hendricks. In the Year Ten Thousand (November 1892 Arena; 1917 chap) is a Utopian tale whose ancient narrator describes life in 2320, after vegetarianism fixes the Homo sapiens body, and 4051, after Telepathy fixes our souls; ...
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 ...