SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 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 ...
Boulle, Pierre
(1912-1994) French author who trained as an electrical engineer and spent eight years in Malaysia as a planter and soldier. His experience of the Orient permeated much of his early work, which was generally not sf; Le pont sur la rivière Kwaï (1952; trans Xan Fielding as The Bridge on the River Kwai 1954) remains his best-known novel. Boulle uses moral fable to pinpoint human absurdities, and his relatively large body of work in the sf genre is a good ...
Castellucci, Cecil
(1969- ) US rock singer, comics writer and author, in Canada for several years from early adulthood; in her music career she works under the name Cecil Seaskull, being most active as a performer during the 1990s. She began to publish work of genre interest with "Lights, Camera, Action" in Magic in the Mirrorstone (anth 2008) edited by Steve Berman; her novels, all to date written for the Young Adult market, include some of sf ...
Hardart, F E
(1913-1992) US teacher, mechanical engineer and author, who published at least one item as Flossie Hardart during her short writing career. Her name has sometimes been given in error as Frank E Hardart. One of a relatively small number of female fans before World War Two (see Fandom; History of SF), she began to publish work of genre interest with "The Devil's Pocket" in Astonishing Stories ...
Hartley, L P
(1895-1972) UK author, in active service during World War One; known mainly for his works outside the sf field, especially for the trilogy comprising The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944), The Sixth Heaven (1946), which has some slight fantasy content, and Eustace and Hilda (1947); and The Go-Between (1953), whose famous opening sentence, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.", can ...
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 ...