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Thursday 6 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 ...
Waller, Leslie
(1923-2007) US author, also resident in Italy and London, who wrote a number of bestsellers and the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977): Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), published as by Steven Spielberg. He is sometimes credited as co-inventor of the Graphic Novel in America, with the non-sf "picture novel" ...
Movie Monsters
1. US letter-size, perfect-bound Cinema magazine printed on newsprint-quality paper. Publisher: Atlas/Seaboard Comics. Editor: Jeff Rovin. Four issues, December 1974 to August 1975. / This publication was the short-lived Comics publisher's attempt to compete with Famous Monsters of Filmland, and was ...
Ferrar, William M
(1823-1906) Irish-born author, in Australia from around 1842, who also wrote as by Ferdinand Ferntree. No copies of his first identified title of sf interest, The Dream of Hubertus (circa 1870-1879), seem to have been examined. Given the carry-over of the eponym, this tale may have been an early draft of Ferrar's ambitious Dystopia, ...
Dicks, Terrance
(1935-2019) UK scriptwriter, editor, and author, best known for his involvement in various capacities over many years with Doctor Who (see this entry for more details). His career as scriptwriter for this BBC television series began in the late 1960s with rewrite work on episodes 3-6 of Brian Hayles's season-six storyline The Seeds of Death (25 January-1 March 1969), later in the season he was jointly credited with ...
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 ...