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Monday 17 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.
Site updated on 17 February 2025
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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Underwood, Erin
(? - ) US publisher and author, founder of a book fiction blog which evolved into Underwords Press in 2012; it specializes in Young Adult material. She continues as publisher of the press. She began to publish work of genre interest with "The Foam Born" in Bloodstones (anth 2012) edited by Amanda Pillar, but has been more active as an editor of Original Anthologies, ...
Sinykin, Sheri Cooper
(1950- ) US author of fantasies for the Young Adult market (not listed below), among which is a tale of sf interest, A Matter of Time (1998), whose young protagonist is transported by Time Machine back to her grandparents' era, where she discovers that they are real folk like her. Her new-found family values persist after she returns to the present. [JC]
Hive Minds
A hive mind is the organizing principle of the community in those insect species of which the basic reproductive unit is the hive, organized around a single fertile female, the queen. The term is used more loosely in some sf stories, often referring to any situation in which minds are linked in such a way that the whole becomes dominant over the parts. / Because the organization of social-insect communities is so very different from that of mammal communities, while showing a degree of ...
Light Novel
Term popularized in Japan for pocket-sized Pulp works of Young Adult fiction, often mistaken for a literary genre. "Light" was originally a statement not of content, but of literal weight, with publishers commonly splitting up larger novels into two- and three-volume chapbooks in order to aid the train-commuting reader. In this regard, the format bears a distant relationship to the "railway novels" once sold in ...
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 ...