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Saturday 14 June 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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 9 June 2025
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Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Videogame (1999). Firaxis Games (FG). Designed by Brian Reynolds, Sid Meier. Platforms: Win (1999); Mac (2000); Lin (2001). / Alpha Centauri is a 4X Game based on an attempt to colonize the eponymous solar system. It is much influenced by the designers' Civilization series of historical games, particularly Sid Meier's Civilization II (1996 ...
Bowker, Richard
(1950- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Side Effect" for Unearth in Summer 1977. His first novel, Forbidden Sanctuary (1982), treats a ticklish theological problem – whether an Alien whose possession of a soul is moot can claim sanctuary in a church – with due regard for the likely Roman Catholic view on the issue (see Religion). Replica ...
Colander, Valerie Nieman
(1955- ) US newspaper editor, poet and author known mostly for her Young Adult novel, Neena Gathering (1988), set with some effectiveness in a balkanized post-Disaster America, though much that might seem innovative here is borrowed fairly directly from other tales set in what has become a very familiar venue. In this context, the heroine comes of age. The book was reissued under the byline ...
Rodriguez, Robert
(1968- ) US filmmaker who has repeatedly straddled sf boundaries with other genres: Horror in The Faculty (1998), which draws on and quotes Robert A Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (1951); 1970s exploitation cinema plus Zombies and Monster Movie tropes in ...
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 ...