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Sunday 7 December 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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Heliotrope
US professional downloadable Online Magazine co-founded by Damon Caporaso, Dave Comery and Jay Tomio, with Tomio as the editor-in-chief. It ran for six issues, each long delayed, from August 2006 to Spring 2009. Each issue was beautifully designed with emphasis given to striking artwork and features, most of which looked better on screen than when downloaded. Each issue ran just two or three short stories, most of which were more fantastic than sf, though ...
Ishiguro, Kazuo
(1954- ) Japanese-born author in the UK since 1960, his first work being three stories, all ostensibly nonfantastic, for Invitation 7: Stories by New Writers (anth 1981) edited anonymously. He soon became known as a novelist of fictions only superficially obedient to the strictures against the fantastic maintained (in the twentieth century) by an insecure British literary establishment. Indeed, since the publication of his most famous tale, ...
Sullivan, Tim
(1948-2024) US actor, film director, editor and author, long partnered with Fiona Kelleghan until 2018. He began publishing sf with "Tachyon Rag" in Unearth for Spring 1977 as Timothy Robert Sullivan, followed by such stories as "My Father's Head" for Chrysalis 5 (anth 1979) edited by Roy Torgeson and "The Rauncher Goes to Tinker Town" for New Dimensions 9 (anth 1979) ...
Westall, Robert
(1929-1993) UK art teacher (1960-1985), antique shop proprietor and author whose work, until near the end of his life, was usually for the Young Adult market or for younger children; from the beginning of his career, he was clearly at the forefront of those authors who had begun to respond to their audience's need for more direct confrontation with issues that concerned them. His nonfantastic debut novel, The Machine-Gunners (1975), which formed the ...
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 ...