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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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Hekkanen, Ernest
(1947- ) US-born author, in Canada from 1969, active from the early 1980s; much of his fiction brushes against the water margins of Fantastika, evoking a range of associations from Magic Realism to Franz Kafka. He is of sf interest for Dementia Island (1999), set in a hazily Near Future Dystopia whose ...
Fleming, Peter
(1907-1971) UK journalist, author and travel writer, brother of Ian Fleming, known mainly for such travel books as Brazilian Adventure (1933), whose gritty irreverence (both for the place visited and for the visitor) made him famous. In his spoof sf novel, The Flying Visit (1940), Adolf Hitler parachutes into the UK with amusing results (the book was published before Rudolf Hess's actual descent upon Scotland in May 1941). The tale was ...
Smith, E E [2]
In effect a pseudonym used by Gordon Eklund (whom see), who after expanding an old E E Smith story as Lord Tedric (March 1954 Universe by Smith; exp 1978) wrote further solo sequels variously credited as collaborations and as by Smith alone. [JC/DRL]
Thom, Robert
(1929-1979) US screenwriter and author, of sf relevance mainly for his film work. For Wild in the Streets (1968) directed by Barry Shear, he wrote the screenplay, basing this on an earlier story, "The Day It All Happened, Baby!" (original publication not found); he was also responsible for the novelization, Wild in the Streets (1968). The surname of the rock star in this film – Flatlow – reflects Thom's original surname, ...
Aaron, Shale
Pseudonym of US teacher and author Robert Boswell (1953- ), whose work under his own name is not of genre interest. Virtual Death (1995), his sf novel as by Aaron, interestingly traverses Cyberpunk tropes; the protagonist, an actor who dies on stage for a living (and is later resuscitated), finds herself implicated in a revolutionary conflict engineered by her mother. Computer viruses enter the ...
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 ...