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Friday 2 June 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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Barceló, Elia
(1957- ) Spanish academic and author, in Austria from 1981; she is one of the three most important Women SF Writers working in Spanish, along with the Cuban Daína Chaviano and the Argentine Angélica Gorodischer. She has published thirteen fantasy and sf novels, four collections and more than sixty short stories. In ...
Gallego, S G
(1883-1944) Spanish-born author, in US from an undetermined point; John Smith, Emperor (1944) is a Near Future tale whose culture-Hero protagonist uses his Invention of a secret device to impose peace on the world, and to institute a Utopia where anything that the protagonist considers immoral (Sex is particularly offensive to him) is made ...
Moss, Sarah
(1975- ) Scottish author whose sf novel, Cold Earth (2009), set in the very Near Future, movingly depicts the fate – indirectly, through letters they send off into the void – of six archaeologists trapped in Greenland in winter by a planet-wide Pandemic as the End of the World looms. In Ghost Wall (2018), a single geographical point ...
Cravens, Gwyneth
(? - ) US author of The Black Death (1977) with John S Marr, then head of the New York City Bureau of Preventible Diseases, about a Near Future Disaster in which the eponymous plague (see Pandemic) is transmitted unknowingly by a young woman; it was filmed as Quiet Killer (1992). Speed of Light: The Adventures of Ella Speed ...
Wright, Kirby
(? - ) US author of The End, My Friend: Prelude to the Apocalypse (dated 2013 but 2014), a Near Future California after central governments collapse; the protagonists trek eastwards in search of a stable world. [JC]
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 ...