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Tuesday 21 March 2023
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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Russia
Russian sf can trace its ancestry back to the eighteenth century, most of the earliest examples being Utopias. Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov's Puteshestvie v zemlyu Ofirskuyu ["Journey to the Land of Ophir"] (written circa 1785; 1896) embodies the political and social reforms espoused by the liberal and progressive elements of Catherine the Great's aristocracy. The technological prophecies of "4338 i-god" (1840; trans as "The Year 4338" in ...
Finger, Charles J
(1867-1941) UK-born author, in US from 1896, author of markedly staid and manly books for boys, with the exception of The Spreading Stain: A Tale for Boys and Men With Boys' Hearts (1927), an sf Disaster tale in which floods, fire and managerial incompetence conspire to help give birth to a universal Pandemic instigated by a pesticide gone wrong (see Ecology); the protagonist (who narrates the ...
Palmer, Philip
(1960- ) UK author and scriptwriter, mostly for Radio beginning with "Gin and Rum" (30 June 2000 BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play). He began to publish his exuberant, slightly overloaded, gonzo Space Operas with Debatable Space (2008), whose double story focuses alternatively on the lengthy memoir of an Immortal woman behind the throne of her son, who had once ruled ...
Peck, Wallace
Pseudonym of the unidentified US author (? -? ) of The Golden Age of Patents: A Parody on Yankee Inventiveness (1888 chap), which describes a series of spoof Inventions, sometimes with an effect of Satire, though some Yankee inspirations are narrated as tall tales. The illustrations are amusing. [JC]
Blair, Hamish
Pseudonym of Andrew James Fraser Blair (1872-1935), Scottish author, journalist and editor, resident in India for many years; his sf is all set in the Near Future, and focuses on issues of governance. In 1957 (1930) he describes how air power overcomes the Second Indian Mutiny (see Pax Aeronautica). In its sequel, Governor Hardy (1931), he focuses on the ensuing international intrigues, which lead to ...
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...