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Sunday 7 June 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Malkus, Alida Sims
Working name of US author Lyda Sims Malkus (1888-1976), usually of historical juveniles insubstantially tinged with fantasy; of sf interest is The Dark Star of Itza: The Story of a Pagan Princess (1930), a Lost Race tale set in southern Mexico; a vision of Mayan civilization is intensely and informatively conveyed. [JC]
Flint, Homer Eon
(1889-1924) US author (born Homer Eon Flindt) whose first work was as a screenwriter in 1912, with a script for "The Joke That Spread" (there is no evidence the film was made; at least seven more scripts were sold), and whose work appeared mainly in the Frank A Munsey magazines from the teens of the century. His first sf story was "The Planeteer" in All-Story Weekly for 9 March 1918; it deals with sexual rivalry and ...
LeBlanc, Maurice
(1864-1941) French author in various genres, though after he began the Arsène Lupin sequence, with "L'Arrestation d'Arsène Lupin" ["The Arrest of Arsène Lupin"] (15 July 1905 Je Sais Tout), he focused most of his energies on his raffish, inexplicably elusive gentleman thief and frustrator of "Herlock Sholmes" or "Holmlock Shears" (these and other names were used in attempts to placate Arthur Conan Doyle). In later ...
Ransome, Arthur
(1884-1967) UK journalist and author, active during World War One as a British secret agent working for MI6 in Russia while publicly supporting the Bolsheviks, before and after they came to power in 1917; his nonfiction Six Weeks in Russia in 1919 (1919) does not hint at any such involvement. He remains very much best known for his nonfantastic Swallows and Amazons series of children's books set initially in the Lake District, whose sixth ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...