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Thursday 6 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 ...
Clifford, Sarah
(1916-1976) Polish-born author in US from 1936 or earlier (naturalized 1943); author of the routine sf novel, Adam and His Women (1972) (see Adam and Eve). [JC]
History of SF
Sf is an impure genre (see Definitions of SF) which did not finally take shape until the late nineteenth century, although all its separate elements existed earlier. If the labelling of any earlier story as sf depended only on the presence of sf elements there would be many such. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, has a Fantastic Voyage and a great world-flood (see ...
Gloss, Molly
(1944- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Joining" (June 1984 F&SF); much of her later fiction comprises historical novels set in her native Oregon, and her first book – Outside the Gates (1986), a Young Adult fantasy – is also set in a world both mountainous and pastoral. Her first sf novel, The Dazzle of Day (1997), is set mostly in a ...
Sykes, Arthur A
(1861-1939) UK teacher, journalist and author who sometimes wrote as by A A S and who sometimes spelled his surname Sikes; mostly in the second of his collections, Without Permission: A Book of Dedications (coll 1896), are assembled some stories of sf interest, usually Satirical, including "The New Bacillus", which seems to echo H G Wells's "The Stolen Bacillus" (21 June 1894 The ...
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 ...