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Thursday 17 April 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.
Site updated on 14 April 2025
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Philmus, Robert M
(1943- ) US sf critic, professor of English literature at Concordia University, Montreal. He became a co-editor of Science Fiction Studies with the November 1978 issue and remained in that position until the last issue of 1991; he remains a contributing editor. His Into the Unknown: The Evolution of Science Fiction from Francis Godwin to H.G. Wells (1970; rev 1983) is scholarly and informative, and something ...
Casto, Jackie
(1939-2019) US author who wrote romances variously under her full name and also as by Jackie Black; active for more than a decade from 1982. She is of sf interest for the Destiny sequence beginning with Dreams of Destiny (1990), whose protagonist, a psychic (see Psi Powers) is rescued from a planet devastated by War and given the chance to go wandering in a romance-filled Space Opera ...
Thompson, Douglas
(1967- ) Scottish architectural designer and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Icarus in Nouvelleville" in Subtle Edens: An Anthology of Slipstream Fiction (anth 2008) edited by Allen Ashley; it is assembled in The Sleep Corporation: The Collected Stories of Douglas Thompson (coll 2015). His first novel, Ultrameta: A Fractal Novel (2009), uses sf devices like ...
APA
An acronym taken from the National Amateur Press Association, an organization founded in 1869 to coordinate the distribution of its members' writings. An APA or apa mailing is a collection of individually produced contributions of which multiple copies – one for each apa member – have been sent to a central editor, usually known as the Official Editor or OE, who then collates them and distributes the assembled result to all contributors. Typically this is a loose pile of pamphlets, ...
She Devil
Film (1957). Regal Pictures/20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Produced and directed by Kurt Neumann. Written by Neumann and Carroll Young from "The Adaptive Ultimate" (November 1935 Astounding) by Stanley G Weinbaum, writing as and here credited as John Jessel. Cast includes John Archer, Fay Baker, Mari Blanchard, Albert Dekker and Jack Kelly. 77 minutes. Black and white. / Biochemist Dr Dan Scott (Kelly) has developed ...
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 ...