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Sunday 9 February 2025
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.
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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Watson, Paul E
(? - ) US author of The Robot (2011), a Young Adult tale whose two teenaged male protagonists discover a female Robot in off-bounds laboratory of one of their parents, who is a "genius" scientist. The robot is interested in Sex, but also, according to its programming, in engaging in an assassination. [JC]
Sebold, Gaie
(? - ) US-born author, in UK from childhood, who began to publish work of genre interest with "A Fire by Night" in Legends for October 2002. Most of her work has been fantasy, including the Babylon Steel sequence beginning with Babylon Steel (2011; vt Bad Gods 2022) whose protagonist, who runs a brothel in the City of Scalentine, finds herself involved in noirish efforts to keep its ...
O'Toole, George
(1936-2001) US specialist in espionage – he worked for the American Central Intelligence Agency 1966-1969 – and author of a very Near Future thriller, The Agent on the Other Side (1973), in which America and the USSR are at odds. [JC]
Chaon, Dan
(1964- ) US author, most of whose work may be defined as horror (see Horror in SF), the topoi of which are scrutinized with sophisticated intensity; active from the early 1980s; his early stories were assembled as Fitting Ends and Other Stories (coll 1995) and Among the Missing (coll 2001). Like all his work, they are hauntedly illuminating about the family romance between the world and the storyable, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...