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Thursday 15 May 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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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Shannon, Terence
(? - ) US author in whose What Happened to the Indians (2000) America is threatened with an Alien Invasion, these events prefigured by UFO landings in the 1940s; and responds more vigorously than the "Indians" did when the white man first came to the continent. A markedly right-wing pattern of argument (see Politics), presented ...
Slater, W H
(? -? ) UK author in whose sf novel, The Golden Load (1926), a scientist's Discovery of the secret of synthesizing gold (see Transmutation) leads to worldwide Disaster. [JC]
Chester, George Randolph
(1870-1924) US screenwriter and author, married to Lillian Chester, his close collaborator from the time of their marriage in 1911; the sexist conventions of the time treated him as the senior partner, but his references to her seem to contradict this. His (or their) The Jingo (1912) satirizes simultaneously the lost-race (see Lost Worlds) story and US know-how in a tale about a salesman selling his modern ...
Scott, Allan
(1952-2023) UK author of half-Danish ancestry, who after both editing and writing for the Oxford University SF Group's Amateur Magazine SFinx in the early 1970s – his first appearance in that venue being "The Forbidden Land" (October 1970 SFinx #3) – began professionally publishing work of genre interest with "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" in Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters (anth ...
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 ...