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Saturday 21 May 2022
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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Bennet, Robert Ames
(1870-1954) US author who concentrated on Westerns, and author of four novels of sf interest. In Thyra: A Romance of the Polar Pit (1901), three explorers, after nearly freezing to death, discover a Balloon which conveys them to a clement Lost World, hidden near the North Pole and full of prehistoric beasts, bestial ape-men (see Apes as Human), clairvoyant priestesses and unusually tall socialists whose lives are based on memories of old Iceland; it is a good example of the polar Lost World ...
Shea, Kieran
(1965- ) US author most of whose short fiction is nonfantastic; he is of sf interest primarily for the Koko sequence of gonzo adventures beginning with Koko Takes a Holiday (2014). The eponymous female protagonist, retired from mercenary work (see Military SF), has invested in a brothel in The Sixty Islands, an artificial Archipelago where simulated contests (see Androids; Games and Sports; Virtual Reality) replicate exaggeratedly real-world conditions 500 years in to the ...
Gauger, Rick
Working name of US author Richard C Gauger (1942- ), who began publishing sf with "The Vacuum-Packed Picnic" for Omni in September 1979. His sf novel, Charon's Ark (1987), intriguingly depicts the hijacking of a 747 full of students, which is taken to Charon, the hollowed-out moon of Pluto, a Macrostructure constructed by Aliens to preserve Earth's Dinosaurs. Charon turns out to be a World Ship with a dangerously defective Computer, whose function is to carry life across ...
Gellis, Roberta L
(1927-2016) US author, author of many historical romances from 1964; her works of genre interest under her own name, either solo or in collaboration with Mercedes Lackey, have been romantic fantasies. She wrote two 1970s sf novels as by Max Daniels: The Space Guardian (1978) and Offworld (1979). A third sf venture under her own name is Overstars Mail: Imperial Challenge (2004), a Space Opera literally about crises in the mails as the Galactic Empire goes through a time of trouble. [JC]
Barton, Samuel
(1839-1895) US author who worked as a broker and also published under the pseudonym A B Roker. His sf novel, The Battle of the Swash and the Capture of Canada (1888), thought by Thomas D Clareson to be the first American Future War tale, was written to show the defencelessness of the US coasts (and incidentally the vulnerability of Canada) as the USA and UK come to blows, a conflict eventually won by the US through the invention of self-destructing torpedo boats. This author has been wrongly ...
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 and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...