SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 4 October 2023
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.
Site updated on 3 October 2023
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Peek, Hedley
(1858-1904) UK biscuit manufacturer, sportswriter, publisher and author of Nema and Other Stories (coll 1895), which contains fantasies; and The Chariot of the Flesh (1897), in which a proto-Superman, who has developed the power of Teleportation and has in other ways grown beyond his home in the West, travels to a hidden community of folk known as Aphar in the Himalayas, where he engages in advanced ...
Givins, Robert C
(1845-1915) Canadian-born real estate developer (including a castle for himself in South Chicago) and author, in US from an early age; his romances were sometimes published as by Snivig C Trebor (his name spelled backwards). His one sf novel, A Thousand Miles an Hour (1913), might stand as a compendium of misunderstood science – examples being the concept of an aeroplane whose vertical screw allows it to remain still while the world turns, and the notion that ...
Baker, Matthew
(1985- ) US author who began publishing work of some genre interest with "Foundling" in Lumberyard for 2009. His first collection, Hybrid Creatures (coll of linked stories 2015), follows the thematically linked search of four varied characters for meaningful community in a fractured Media Landscape, each of them plagued by the dysfunctional Communication systems of the ...
Locus Award
Popular Award voted on by readers of the leading sf news magazine (or Newszine) Locus, and presented annually since 1971. Each year's Locus awards normally honour work first published in the previous year. Thanks to their exceptionally wide reader base, these sf awards have come to share the stature of the Hugos (which reflect the preferences of fans and professionals who attend ...
Shea, Cornelius
(1863-1920) US author for the silent screen and author of dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF), prolific in many categories but best remembered for marvel stories using a fairly consistent "mythology" of dwarfs, subterranean eruptions, and stage illusion masquerading as supernatural magic. His first tale of sf interest seems to be The Air Voyagers; Or, a Trip to the Moon in a Balloon: A Tale of Wonderful Adventure (1880 chap), which may have been ...
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...