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Wednesday 15 January 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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Galactic Cowboys
US rock group who have returned repeatedly to sf themes in their music, often evoking motifs and venues found in sf Westerns. Their 1991 eponymous debut crashes and bashes through songs that use the Moon landing, including audio samples of Neil Armstrong, as a point of reference: particularly "Pump Up The Space Suit" and the ironically titled (given its raucously insistent heavy metal style) "Sea of Tranquillity". "Ranch on Mars" ...
Skurzynski, Gloria
(1930- ) US author from the 1970s of fiction and nonfiction for Young Adult markets; in her first sf novel, Cyberstorm (1995), a young girl finds herself trapped in a Virtual Reality room meant to re-create a world of happy memories for its elderly owner; wrongness soon pervades the enclave. Skurzynski's Virtual War Chronologs sequence beginning with Virtual War (1997) ...
Trease, Geoffrey Robert
(1909-1998) UK critic and author, mostly of historical fiction for younger and Young Adult readers, publishing 113 books between 1934 and his retirement in 1997. Most of these were historical fiction and manifested his left-wing politics, beginning with the Communist-influenced Bows Against the Barons (1934). There is a strong Utopian element in some of his early novels, including the ...
Bush, Catherine
(1961- ) Canadian author, most of whose work is nonfantastic, including her best-known novel, The Rules of Engagement (2000). She is of sf interest for Blaze Island (2020), set in an Alternate History whose Near Future is not easily distinguishable from consensus reality. An unprecedentedly severe hurricane (at least Category Five) devastates ...
Cameron, Berl
A House Name used for sf novels published by Curtis Warren and written by John S Glasby (always in collaboration with Arthur Roberts), Brian Holloway, Denis Hughes and David O'Brien. The latter's International Research Council ...
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 ...