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Friday 29 September 2023
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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Talbot, Hake
Pseudonym of US author Henning Cunningham Nelms (1900-1986) who as Henning Nelms wrote nonfiction works on theatrical design and stage magic; his Rim of the Pit (1944) is an impossible crime tale whose solution utilizes an sf premise. [JC]
Hacker, Marilyn
(1942- ) US poet, critic, editor, translator and now-retired Professor of English at the City University of New York, married to Samuel R Delany 1961-1980; the latter's Babel-17 (1966; rev 1969) includes chapter epigraphs taken from her poems. Active since 1961 – her first collection of intensely this-worldly poems, Presentation Piece (coll 1974), won a National Book Award for that year – ...
History of SF
Sf is an impure genre (see Definitions of SF) which did not finally take shape until the late nineteenth century, although all its separate elements existed earlier. If the labelling of any earlier story as sf depended only on the presence of sf elements there would be many such. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, has a Fantastic Voyage and a great world-flood (see ...
Peters, Alan
(? -? ) UK author of The Secret Formula (1932), a Near Future tale in which a cure for cancer is discovered (see Medicine). [JC]
Wright, W George
(? -? ) UK author of fiction for boys, who also wrote as by Howard Grant and Paul Quinton. In The School in the Air: A Splendid Long Complete Story of Schoolboy Fun & Adventure All Over the World (28 October 1922-6 January 1923 Pluck; 1924 chap) and Wings of Adventure: An Exciting Yarn of Schoolboy Travel & Adventure on an Air Trip to Africa (13 January-14 April 1923 Pluck; 1926 chap), both as by Paul Quinton, a ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...