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Tuesday 8 October 2024
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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Coover, Robert
(1932-2024) US author who established a considerable reputation with his novels, in which Fabulation and political scatology mix fruitfully. His work could be seen to represent a Postmodernist intensification of the same milieu excoriated by Richard Condon; at times both authors seem to be describing a nightmare dream of orgy-choked life in the Late Roman Empire (see ...
Wilson, Snoo
(1948-2013) UK playwright and author, born Andrew James Wilson, whose sf novels Spaceache (1984) and Inside Babel (1985) comprise a short series of Satires whose targets are contemporary Politics and culture. Unfortunately, his use of sf instruments is significantly less competent than can be found in some more conventional Mainstream Writers of SF; his attempt to ...
Campbell, John W, Jr
(1910-1971) US author and editor who took a degree in physics in 1932 from MIT and Duke University, where it is likely he became aware of J B Rhine's early experiments in parapsychology (see Pseudoscience). Campbell was a devotee of the SF Magazines from their inception, and sold his first stories while still a teenager, beginning with "Invaders from the Infinite" to ...
Dimension X
Radio series (1950-1951). NBC-Radio network. Regular staff writers included Ernest Kinroy (1924-2014), George Lefferts, and Howard Rodman. Narrator: Norman Rose. 50 30-minute episodes. / This was one of the earliest adult sf Radio drama anthology series, and was of reasonably high quality; most instalments were based on published sf stories, although Kinroy and Lefferts contributed several original plays. Dimension X was partnered with ...
Allen, F M
Pseudonym of Irish author and publisher Edmund Downey (1856-1937), in London for much of his working life after 1878 until 1906. In a sense, his fiction was self-published, as he owned the firms that published it; but both Downey & Co. and Ward & Downey had reputable lists of authors beyond Downey himself. His short Disaster sequence, set in Ireland – The Voyage of the Ark, as Related by Dan Banim (1888), which retells the Biblical story ...
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 ...