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Saturday 12 October 2024
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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Coover, Robert
(1932-2024) US author who established a considerable reputation with his novels, in which Fabulation and political scatology mix fruitfully. His work could be seen to represent a Postmodernist intensification of the same milieu excoriated by Richard Condon; at times both authors seem to be describing a nightmare dream of orgy-choked life in the Late Roman Empire (see ...
Haldeman, Joe
(1943- ) US author who took a BS in physics and astronomy before serving as a combat engineer in Vietnam (1968-1969), where he was severely wounded, earning a Purple Heart; later, in 1975, he took an MFA. This range of degrees was an early demonstration of the range of interests that have shaped the Hard SF with which he has sometimes been identified; his experiences in Vietnam have in fact marked everything he has written, including his first ...
Martian
The title poem of Craig Raine's A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (coll 1979 chap), with its invigorating reimagining of the commonplace as seen and very literally described from an Alien perspective, inspired a 1980s fad for such Martian or "Martianist" displacements; Other People: A Mystery Story (1981) by Martin Amis is one example. The general concept of achieving new ...
Conn, Phoebe
Working name of US teacher and author Phoebe Jane Conn Ingwalson (1941- ), who also writes as by Cinnamon Burke. Most of her romances are nonfantastic though Starfire (1994) is an undemanding sf romance set in Space Opera venues. The Alado Corporation sequence, all but the first as by Cinnamon Burke, and beginning with Beyond the Stars (1988), follows various operatives of a corporation at the heart of a ...
Adams, John Joseph
(1976- ) US magazine editor and anthologist, associated with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as an editorial assistant from 2001 and assistant editor since 2004. He left F&SF in January 2010 to edit Lightspeed, launched in June that year, the first year's issues being commemorated in Lightspeed: Year One (anth 2011); he also took over ...
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 ...