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Friday 7 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 ...
Johnson, Charles
Almost certainly the joint pseudonym of Gena Metcalf (? - ) and Tom Metcalf (? - ), most of whose work has been nonfiction for Young Adult readers. Of sf interest is Pieces of Eight (1989), whose young protagonists travel by Timeslip to the world of the pirate Blackbeard, where they have adventures; this title was announced as beginning the ...
May, Karl
(1842-1912) German author, much of whose output consisted of Westerns conceived under the clear influence of James Fenimore Cooper; the most famous of these is the Winnetou sequence, featuring the eponymous Native American (as noble as many Germans) and the white man, Old Shatterhand (a projection of the author), the central story being told in Winnetou, der rote Gentleman ...
Stevens, Lawrence Sterne
(1886-1960) American artist who also signed himself Stephen Lawrence or just Lawrence; some covers attributed to Lawrence were actually the work of his son Peter Stevens (1920-2001). The elder Stevens effectively learned how to draw by working as a newspaper artist and did not begin drawing for the sf Pulp magazines until the early 1940s, when the demand for newspaper illustration was diminishing. He was most admired for his interior illustrations, which became his ...
Nanotechnology
Item of terminology borrowed by sf writers from theoreticians of future Technology, and increasingly popular in sf from the late 1980s. It seems to have been first used by K Eric Drexler in 1976, and popularized by him in his highly optimistic book on the subject, Engines of Creation (1986). / Nanotechnology – the term loosely combines "nano", the SI (metric system) prefix denoting 10-9, with "technology" – means the technology of the ...
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 ...