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Wednesday 9 September 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.
Site updated on 7 September 2026
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de Parville, Henri
Pseudonym of French author François Henri Peudefer (1838-1909) who is of sf interest for Un habitant de la planète Mars: roman d'anticipation (1865; trans Brian Stableford as An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars 2008), based on a hoax newspaper article by Peudefer (signed A Lomon). published 17 June 1864 Le Pays, and purporting to describe the discovery of a humanoid fossil from Mars in ...
Starfaring
Role Playing Game (1976). Flying Buffalo. Designed by Ken St. Andre. / Starfaring was the first Role Playing Game to be set in a Space Opera universe. Its milieu includes such iconic features of the subgenre as Faster Than Light travel, intelligent Aliens, hostile Robots, ...
Werper, Barton
A joint House Name used by the US authors Lynwood Paul Fields (1941-2003) – whose working name for other books was Peter T Scott – and Peg O'Neill Scott Fields (see the entry for her pseudonym Scott O'Neill) – who copyrighted other work under her birth name Peg O'Neill Scott – for their unauthorized Tarzan: The New Series sequence (see also Tarzan). Each worked solo, with ...
Robinson, Phil
(1847-1902) UK journalist and author of stories and essays mostly set in a romanticized India or Africa (see Imperialism); his collections, usually interspersing fiction and nonfiction, include some sf. Of strongest interest may be "The Hunting of the Soko" (in Under the Punkah, coll 1881), an Apes as Human tale that may have influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs's creation of ...
Luna
Russian documentary film (1965; vt The Moon). Leningrad Popular Science Film Studio. Directed by Pavel Klushantsev. Written by an unidentified author. Cast comprises unidentified actors. 51 minutes. Colour. / This documentary begins with numerous scenes of the lunar surface, accompanied by narration suggesting some discussion of the volcanic origins of lunar features; there follow several lectures, apparently also focused on the nature of the Moon, ...
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 ...