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Monday 7 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 ...
Folingsby, Kenneth
The possible pseudonym of a probable Scotsman (? - ) whose Meda: A Tale of the Future (1891) – though the events it recounts turn out to be a dream experienced during a four-month trance – remains of some sf interest for the imaginative scope of the 5575 CE Utopia depicted, in which large-headed brainy "Scotonians" are fed by ambient electricity, possess Antigravity, and ...
Fantastic Universe
US Digest-size magazine, last six issues adopted a trimmed Pulp format, though on better quality paper. 69 issues June/July 1953 to March 1960, published by King-Size Publications to July 1959, then by Great American Publications. Fantastic Universe began as a bimonthly, but went monthly in September 1954 and held to that schedule for most of its life except November 1958-September 1959, when it was again bimonthly. ...
Kratman, Tom
(1956- ) US professional soldier from the age of seventeen, retiring in 1992 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and author, most of whose work has been Military SF, including his first novel, A State of Disobedience (2003), which details the process of a revolution against a tyrannical US president in 2060. Series include the Legacy of the Aldenata with John Ringo (whom see for details ...
Venter, Eben
(1954- ) South African author, in Australia from 1986. His fiction is almost entirely nonfantastic, much of it depicting, with some autobiographical elements, the ethical and political dilemmas that might characteristically confront a nonconforming white man born and raised Afrikaaner in a dissolving world. Of sf interest is Horrelpoot (2006; trans Luke Stubbs as Trencherman 2008), set in a devastated Near Future ...
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 ...