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Saturday 12 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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Hérault, Paul-Jean
Pseudonym of French journalist and author Michel Rigaud (1934-2020), perhaps best known in France for his Cal de Ter sequence of Space Operas beginning with Le Rescapé de la Terre ["The Survivor of Earth"] (1975). Les Clones Deviants ["The Clone Deviants"] (2005; trans Michael Shreve as The Clone Rebellion 2015) is set in a Galactic Empire universe, with great armies of ...
Samson, Joan
(1937-1976) US author of only one novel before her early death from brain cancer. The Auctioneer (1975), a tale of Fantastika that avoids any explicit sf conclusion, is set in an isolated New England town (see Zone) whose binding communal Perception of immunity from American life as a whole is threatened then shattered by through the irruption of the eponymous ...
Evans, Richard
(1950-1996) UK sf editor for various London publishers: Futura – where he launched the Orbit sf imprint – in the 1970s, Hutchinson/Arrow until 1983, and finally Gollancz, where he remained a senior editor until his death. At Arrow he edited, anonymously, two sf anthologies for the children's imprint Sparrow: Peter Davison's Book of Alien Monsters (anth 1982) and Peter Davison's Book of Alien Planets (anth 1983). The stories ...
Startling Mystery Stories
US digest magazine, saddle-stapled, 18 issues Summer 1966 to March 1971, published by Health Knowledge Inc, New York; edited by Robert A W Lowndes; 132 pages; quarterly. / Startling Mystery Stories was one of the routine genre magazines added by Robert A W Lowndes to the Health Knowledge Inc list during his time with this publisher, a companion to ...
Hecht, Ben
(1894-1964) US journalist, playwright, screenwriter, publisher and author, active from 1910 in Chicago with Bohemian literary circles as a journalist before becoming exceedingly successful in Hollywood as a screenwriter, the first of his seventy or more scripts dating from the late 1920s, all nonfantastic, many for films that have become famous. His writings are particularly notable for their cynicism, Iconoclasm and irony. Many of his short stories border on ...
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 ...