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Tuesday 6 June 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.
Site updated on 6 June 2023
Sponsor of the day: Joe Haldeman
Skolsky, Syd
(1917-1998) US author, mostly on musical subjects; her sf novel, The Affectionism Society: A Love Story in a Futuristic Setting (1977), is a Near Future First Contact tale in which humans and the Alien Vars begin to understand each other through the problematics of Sex. [JC]
Brebner, Winston
(1924-2004) US author whose sf novel Doubting Thomas (1956) depicts a computer-ruled Dystopia; the protagonist of the tale, a magistrate in his centrally controlled state, secretly becomes a clown once a year, during the State Holiday, giving some opportunities for Satire. The novel also explores the metaphysical pathos of clowning in a world that disallows any element of Revel. [JC]
Schweigende Stern, Der
["The Silent Star"] Film (1960; vt Raumschiff Venus Antwortet Nicht; The Silent Star; First Spaceship on Venus, 1962 US; Planet of the Dead; The Astronauts; The Silent Star, 2004; Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply). Deutsche Film. Directed by Kurt Maetzig. Written by Jan Fethke, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Kurt Maetzig, Günter Reisch, Günther Rucker, Alexander Stenbock-Fermor, and J Barkhauer (uncredited), based on the novel ...
Curtis, Philip
(1920-2012) UK teacher and author who is best known for the Mr Browser sequence of Young Adult sf novels, beginning with Mr Browser and the Brain Sharpeners (1979; vt Invasion of the Brain Sharpeners 1981), which comically, though sometimes pedantically, engage teachers and others with various challenges, some of them instigated by Aliens. The eponymous villains of ...
Wright, William Henry
(1856-1934) US journalist and author, perhaps best known for his nonfiction The Black Bear (1910) about raising a bear named Ben from infancy. Of sf interest is The Great Bread Trust (1900 chap), a Satire on capitalist excesses in which an entrepreneur, after heading a cartel that corners the market in cereal, has himself proclaimed the King of America. [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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...