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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 ...
Spencer, G F
(? - ) UK author whose sf novel is Heavens for All (1944). [JC/DRL]
Wilde, Fran
(1972- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Everlasting" in Daily Science Fiction for September 2011. Her shorter works are often sf, though sometimes Equipoisally, like "How to Walk Through Historic Graveyards in the Post-Digital Age" (April 2015 Asimov's), where a high-tech Perception monitor "embeds" user in ...
Davis, Margaret
(1951- ) US author of the Mind sequence of Space Operas comprising Mind Light (1993) and Minds Apart (1994), in which a family of interstellar traders interacts with governments, other traders and Aliens. [JC]
Time in Reverse
The notion of Time running backwards, with effects preceding causes, is both strongly counter-intuitive and fascinatingly easy to imagine: playing a movie in reverse is among the oldest and most familiar of special effects. The Time Traveller in H G Wells's The Time Machine (1895) sees his housekeeper apparently moving backwards through the room during the final moments of his return journey from the future. Still earlier ...
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 ...