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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.
Site updated on 25 September 2023
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Ross, Deborah J
(1947- ) US author who also writes as by Deborah Wheeler, the name she used for her first publication of genre interest, "Imperatrix" in Sword and Sorceress (anth 1984) edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. For the first decades of her career, she tended to use her own name for Planetary Romances in the Darkover universe, primarily the Darkover: Clingfire sequence ...
Sundog: Frozen Legacy
Videogame (1984). FTL Games. Designed by Bruce Webster. Platforms: AppleII (1984); rev AtariST (1985). / Sundog: Frozen Legacy was one of the earliest Computer Role Playing Games with a science fiction theme. The premise is classic Space Opera; the player begins the game as the owner of the eponymous newly inherited spacecraft, contractually obliged to ...
Webber, Charles Wilkins
(1819-1856) US journalist and author, mostly of nonfantastic adventure tales, the closest to the Gothic Western being perhaps "Jack Long; Or, the Shot in the Eye" (in Tales of the Southern Border coll 1853), where the eponymous marksman with uncanny accuracy shoots each of his ten tormentors in the eye. Webber is of some sf interest for Yieger's Cabinet: Spiritual Vampirism: The History of Etherial Softdown, and her Friends of the "New Light" (1853), an anti-feminist ...
Touponce, William F
(1948-2017) US academic and critic, with the School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) from 1985, there becoming Professor of English and – after retiring in 2012 – Professor Emeritus until his death. His first four book-length critical studies addressed the works of Ray Bradbury (twice), Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov, in ...
Terrill, Cristin
(? - ) US author whose first novel, the Young Adult All Our Yesterdays (2013), confronts Time Paradox issues with surprising and salutary harshness, as the Near Future versions of the two contemporary young protagonists struggle with themselves and each other. Em/Marina must attempt to prevent her/their disturbingly attractive friend from ...
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 ...