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Thursday 16 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.
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Holm, Anne
(1922-1998) Danish author who began her publishing career as early as 1943, writing as Anelise Jørgensen (a form of her maiden name), and who came to wide attention with David (1963; trans L W Kingsland as North to Freedom 1965; vt I Am David 1965), filmed as North to Freedom (2003), which depicts the escape of its young protagonist from a concentration camp in an unnamed country, and his subsequent hegira, in terms so heightened ...
Shawn, Wallace
(1943- ) US actor and playwright, very active in the former capacity; some of his roles – including a part of Strange Invaders (1983), the comic villain Vizzini in The Princess Bride (1987) and Grand Negus Zek in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – are of genre interest. As a playwright, the transgressive and Absurdist works of ...
Passingham, W J
(1897-1957) UK journalist and author, in active service during World War One, who wrote several science-fiction serials for the popular weeklies in the 1930s, none of which was reprinted in book form. Passingham's interest in the progress of science was evident from several articles he wrote for London weekly papers such as "Today's Sky-Baby May be Tomorrow's Flying Giant" (18 January 1936 The Passing Show), which ...
Griffiths, Isabel
(? -? ) Author, presumably UK, of whom nothing is know beyond her one sf novel, Three Worlds (1922), set in a universe where, by a device that anticipates the Multiverse of later generations, three different versions of the protagonist's world exist simultaneously: one mundane; the second oneiric; the third metaphysical. [JC]
Cross, Gillian
(1945- ) UK author, primarily for children, in various genres, including the Demon Headmaster sequence of horror tales [see Checklist below]. Of sf interest are Born of the Sun (1983), in which the search for an Incan Lost World intersects with family romance; New World (1992), in which adventures within a Virtual Reality world turn nightmarish; ...
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 ...