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Sunday 15 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.
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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 ...
Smith, H Allen
(1907-1976) US newspaperman and author, mostly of humorous sketches (from about 1922) and books, often for the Saturday Evening Post. In his first sf novel, Mr Klein's Kampf, or His Life as Hitler's Double (1939), a Jew takes over from his look-alike, Hitler, and spoofishly declares Germany to be the new Zion. The Age of the Tail (1955), also a comic Satire, depicts the effect on a ...
Cartmill, Cleve
(1908-1964) US author and journalist; co-inventor of the Blackmill system of high-speed typography. He began publishing work of genre interest with "Oscar" for Unknown in February 1941, and several short Fantasy novels, also in Unknown; one of these, "Hell Hath Fury" (August 1943 Unknown), was featured in the George Hay anthology of the same title ...
Lavers, Norman
(1935- ) US ornithologist, academic and author whose sf novel, The Northwest Passage (1984), engages in an experiment (see Postmodernism) familiar to readers of the modern novel: the book comprises a "text", complete with a scholarly apparatus which is itself, of course, part of the "text". In this case, a far-future editorial apparatus surrounds (see Ruins and Futurity) the ...
Drury, Allen
(1918-1998) US author of the Advise and Consent sequence of novels depicting US political (see Politics) life from a point roughly similar to real-life 1960 and growing into a full-fledged though ultimately short-winded Future History. The bent is conservatively anti-communist, and the Satirical effects are often telling, though sometimes tendentious. The series comprises ...
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 ...