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Wednesday 16 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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Ashton, Francis Leslie
(1904-1994) UK analytical chemist, painter and author whose first sf novel, The Breaking of the Seals (1946), sets a psychic time-traveller into a prehistoric world (see Prehistoric SF) where primitive society ends in chaos with the breaking up of Bahste, Earth's then Moon; a deluge follows. Its thematic sequel, Alas, That Great City (1948), set in Atlantis, propounds a ...
Zap Gun
A usually facetious term for the sf Blaster, Ray Gun or Stunner. Its first recorded appearance in print, according to the online Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, was in an October 1934 US newspaper ad for a Buck Rogers spinoff Toy: "Buck Rogers Zap Gun 35¢". Brian W Aldiss's ...
Far Frontiers
US magazine in pocketbook format; it could also be regarded as an Original Anthology series. Quarterly, published by Baen Books, edited by Jerry Pournelle and James Baen and (uncredited) John F Carr; seven issues, from Far Frontiers (anth 1985) in January 1985 to Far Frontiers Vol VII (anth Winter ...
Emerson, Willis George
(1856-1918) US criminal entrepreneur and author, involved in at least one mining fraud and a stock fraud late in life, the latter involving the Emerson Motor Company, whose cars were disguised Fords. Most of his novels were Westerns, whose Lost World novel The Smoky God, or A Voyage to the Inner World (1908; vt as coll, The Smoky God and Other Inner Earth Mysteries 1993) is set in 1829 in a ...
Allan, Nina
(1966- ) UK author, partner of Christopher Priest from 2011 until his death in 2024. She began to publish work of genre interest with "The Beachcomber" in Dark Horizons for June 2002; of her fifty or so stories released since, about half contain sf elements, though she was first identified as an author of horror. The interwoven tales assembled as The Silver Wind: Four Stories of Time Disrupted (coll of linked stories ...
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 ...