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Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Helders, Major von
Pseudonym of German soldier and author Robert Knauss (1892-1955), who served in both World War One and World War Two, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and whose nonfiction works focused on aviation matters. Of sf interest is Luftkrieg 1936: Die Zertrümmerun von Paris (1932; trans Claud W Sykes as The War in the Air, 1936 1932; German original rev vt ...
Stein, Benjamin
(1944- ) US actor (as Ben Stein), lawyer, journalist and author, an advocate of intelligent design in Evolution, apparently arguing that a proper understanding of the theory of evolution showed that it led inevitably to Eugenics and the excesses of Nazi Germany. His first novel, On the Brink (1977) with Herbert Stein, depicts a ...
Pollack, Frederick
(1945- ) US university teacher and poet, best known in the latter capacity for his two book-length narrative poems (see Poetry): The Adventure (1986) is an Afterlife fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]; Happiness (1998) is set in an Alternate World, created (perhaps advertently) by Stephen ...
Busby, F M
(1921-2005) US communications engineer, long-time sf fan (from 1950) and author; co-editor with his wife Elinor Busby of the 1950s-1960s Fanzine Cry of the Nameless (see Cry), which won a Hugo award in 1960, producing some of this early work as by Renfrew Pemberton. He began publishing sf stories with "A Gun for Grandfather" in Future Science Fiction for Fall 1957 ...
McBain, Gordon
(1946-1992) US teacher and author who, in his brief sf career, wrote the moderately appealing but unremarkable Exoterra Young Adult sf series, The Path of Exoterra (1981) and Quest of the Dawnstar (1984), featuring in a Planetary Romance venue but expanding into fairly wide-flung Space Opera adventures. [JC]
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 ...