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Friday 10 October 2025
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.
Site updated on 6 October 2025
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de Gourmont, Remy
(1858-1915) French author, whose early work resembles that of Henri de Régnier, and in whose Une Nuite au Luxembourg (1906; trans Arthur Ransome as A Night in the Luxembourg 1912) a superior Alien, whose people occupy the Outer Planets, visits Earth briefly and engages in an illuminating conversation with some cultured humans. ...
Monster that Challenged the World, The
Film (1957). Gramercy Pictures/United Artists. Produced by Arthur Gardener and Jules V Levy. Directed by Arnold Laven. Written by Pat Fielder from an original story by David Duncan. Cast includes Hans Conried, Audrey Dalton, Mimi Gibson, Tim Holt and Max Showalter (credited as Casey Adams). 83 minutes. Black and white. / Several US Navy sailors are found dead under unusual circumstances in the Salton Sea of California ...
Short, Gertrude
(1902-1968) US film actor and author, none of the films she appeared in being sf; of sf interest, however, is her novel, A Visitor from Venus (1949), in which the eponymous visitor, from a Utopian Venus inhabited solely by females, comes to Earth and expresses her shock in Satirical terms at the condition of women on this planet (see Feminism). [JC]
Real Time Strategy
Term used to describe a form of Computer Wargame which combines elements borrowed from 4X Games and strategic board and counter Wargames with continuous ("real time") gameplay. Typically, players must simultaneously research new technologies and gather resources such as fuel and metal, while using those resources to build structures on the battlefield and produce military units which can be used in ...
Odle, E V
(1890-1942) UK editor and author; manager of a munitions factory during World War One; he was the first editor 1926-1936 of the British Argosy Magazine (see The Argosy). As younger brother of the UK illustrator and artist Alan Odle (1888-1948), who was the husband of Dorothy M Richardson (1873-1957), Odle came into close contact with J D Beresford, who had been instrumental in ...
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 ...