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Wednesday 15 January 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.
Site updated on 13 January 2025
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Best, Jessica Mary
(? - ) US singer-songwriter, editor and author who is of sf interest for her first novel, Stars, Hide Your Fires (2023), a Young Adult Space Opera set in the moderately Near Future on an hierarchy-choked Space Station. An element of detection is introduced through the murder of the local emperor, which must be ...
Zahn, Timothy
(1951- ) US author with a master's degree in physics who began publishing sf with "Ernie" in Analog for September 1979, and early proved himself an adept and productive creator of the problem-oriented Hard SF characteristic of that magazine. Some better examples of his work are assembled as Cascade Point (coll 1986), Time Bomb and Zahndry Others (coll 1988), ...
Caine, Hall
(1853-1931) UK playwright and author whose novels sold enormously in the late nineteenth century, but were almost forgotten by his death; he was a friend of Bram Stoker, who dedicated Dracula (1897) with a reference, in Manx, to his extremely short stature. The Mahdi, or Love and Race (1894) depicts a Near-Future uprising in Morocco at the behest of the eponymous leader of the faithful. ...
Grossman, Leigh
(? - ) US editor and author, who also writes as Leigh Ronald Grossman; perhaps best known for his sf Anthology, Sense of Wonder (anth 2011), which in its nearly 1,000 dense pages includes at least 200 sf stories with commentaries. His novels, including the Cards of Fate series beginning with The Green Lion (2007), and The Lost Daughters (2018), which is a singleton, are ...
Schreiner, Olive
(1855-1920) South African social theorist and author who remains best known for her first novel, The Story of an African Farm (1883) as by Ralph Iron, which casts a clear unfavourable light on the role of Religion in cementing Imperialist claims to ethical superiority over conquered civilizations. Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland (1897), with its reportedly censured frontispiece showing a lynched black ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...