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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 ...
Bernard, Rafe
Secondary pseudonym of UK author Reginald Alec Martin (1908-1971), better known for his Children's SF written as by E C Eliott (whom see for full entry). He used Bernard for an sf novel, The Wheel in the Sky (1954), which datedly concerns itself with the construction of a pre-NASA-style, privately financed Space Station, and for an Invaders ...
Rayner, Jacqueline
(? - ) UK author long associated with the Doctor Who universe, for which she has written numerous Ties, beginning with Doctor Who: Earthworld (2001), including some associated Professor Bernice Summerfield books, beginning with Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Squire's Crystal (2001). Her later contributions to Merlin, a fantasy series for ...
Stiles, Steve
(1943-2020) US artist who studied at The High School of Music & Art and the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York; long active in both Fanzines and Comics. His first professional sale of a cartoon was to Paul Krassner's The Realist in 1961. He contributed covers and/or interior artwork to Fantastic, several Worldcon souvenir books and many fanzines, including ...
Madsen, Svend Ǻge
(1939- ) Danish author active in various genres since the early 1960s. After an early experimental stage, he wrote several novels that applied Equipoisal torsion to genres like crime and romantic fiction, in order to demonstrate their capacity, thus exposed, to subject reality in turm to a testing exposure; of sf interest in this context is Tugt og utugt i mellemtiden (1976; trans James M Ogler as ...
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 ...