SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 6 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 3 February 2025
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
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 ...
Sternbergh, Adam
(? - ) Canadian-born editor and author, in USA for several years; based in New York, the setting of his first novel, Shovel Ready (2014), a slightly retro Cyberpunk noir thriller set in a Dystopian Near Future. Terrorist attacks and Climate Change have partially depopulated the great ...
Giancola, Donato
(1967- ) American artist, at times credited simply as Donato. After initially studying engineering in college, Giancola shifted his focus to art, obtaining a BFA in painting from Syracuse University College of Visual Arts in 1992. Almost immediately, he began receiving assignments to paint covers for major publishers, including Tor Books and Ace Books, creatively employing his classical training to depict ...
Owen, David
(? - ) UK journalist and author of Young Adult novels. His first, Panther (2015), rims Fantastika edgily in the story of a panther loose in London that the protagonist hopes to trap, in order to lift himself from depression caused in part by living in the suburbs. In The Fallen Children: They Will Rise (2017) a similar world is suddenly ...
Absolute Magnitude
US Semiprozine, which began in Spring/Summer 1993, under the title Harsh Mistress; but that name – intended to echo Robert A Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (December 1965-April 1966 If; 1966) – sounded like a bondage magazine to distributors, and the magazine was retitled (its numbering resuming with #1) with its third issue, ...
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 ...