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Tuesday 15 July 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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Kling, Marc-Uwe
(1982- ) German singer-songwriter, cabaret performer and author, active from around 2003; he is of interest for his first novel, QualityLand (2017; trans Jamie Lee Searle 2020), a vaudeville-like Satire of the Near Future Media Landscape, focused upon a Dystopian region called QualityLand where ...
Haile, Terence
(1921-1979) UK author of two sf novels remarkable for their clumsiness and their apparent ignorance of the basic laws of Physics. In Space Train (1962; vt The Claw 1973) a farmer builds a rocket-powered train which, as a consequence of sabotage, takes off into space. There he encounters interplanetary crabs before returning to Earth. Galaxies Ahead (1963) is similarly implausible, with space travellers attaining ridiculous ...
Kennemore, Tim
(1957- ) UK author of children's and Young Adult fiction; she was given the name "Tim" by schoolmates. Her first sf book, The Fortunate Few (1981) is typical of her sharp interest in the power structures adolescents must come to terms with, as here dramatized by its depiction of a Near Future world where gymnastics have become big business, and young athletes risk becoming depersonalized ciphers ...
Frenkel, James R
(1948- ) US editor, married to Joan D Vinge since 1980. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was with Dell Books, where he edited (anonymously) the Binary Star books, each comprising two titles bound sequentially (see Dos); for publication details see Checklist below: Binary Star #1 containing Destiny Times Three (March-April 1945 Astounding; 1957; ...
Halifax, Clifford
Pseudonym of UK physician and author Edgar Beaumont (1860-1921) used (it seems exclusively) for his collaborations with L T Meade, beginning with This Troublesome World (1893 3vols), both anonymous, about a doctor who uses psychotropic Drugs to gain his will; and on various stories published in the Strand Magazine in the course of which mysteries – occult or sf in nature ...
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 ...