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Wednesday 4 October 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.
Site updated on 3 October 2023
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Clarke, Kevin
(? - ) UK playwright and scriptwriter for a wide variety of television programmes; of sf interest is Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis (1989), #143 in the overall Doctor Who sequence, novelizing the script, which he co-wrote, for the twenty-fifth anniversary story (1988 3 parts). The Cybermen are involved, as is the Fourth Reich, and Time Travel. [JC]
Breuer, Miles J
(1889-1945) US physician and author of Czech origin who studied in Austin, Texas and Chicago, Illinois, served in the US Medical Corps in World War One, and spent the majority of his life as a medical doctor in Nebraska. He began publishing work of genre interest with "The Adventures of the Bronze Mahadeva" for 10 Story Book in 1909, an early Pulp magazine. In the following two decades he published at least a dozen short stories, half of them sf. His early ...
Tor Books
US publishing company – initially of paperbacks and later moving into hardcover also – founded by Tom Doherty, then aged 44, in 1980, in conjunction with Richard Gallen; the first titles were published in 1981. Doherty had previously been in control of Ace Books for five years. The first editor-in-chief was Harriet McDougal, and first head sf editor was Jim Baen, who left in 1983 to form his own company in 1984. Beth ...
Solomon, Rivers
(1989- ) US author whose first novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), is set in a Generation Starship many years into its journey. The SF Megatext provides a generous range of likelihoods for this setting to illuminate, some of which Solomon duly invokes: the ritualized maintenance procedures designed to keep the ship and its inhabitants in order; the hierarchized society, whose ruler ...
Atomic Platters
The name – coined by Bill Geerhart at the Conelrad website [see links below] – for a short-lived sub-genre of 1940s and 1950s pop music concerned with an atomic World War Three and its aftermath (see Holocaust). Many, though not all, of the artists and songs that might be so classified fell into later obscurity, but this was in its day a fairly lively aural manifestation of the fascinations of ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...