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Friday 22 September 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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Mekton
Role Playing Game (1984). R Talsorian Games (RTG). Designed by Michael Pondsmith. / Mekton is a game designed to simulate a very specific form of fiction, that of Anime series focusing on giant Robots, or Mecha. Prominent examples of the genre include Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991), ...
Duncan, Ronald
(1914-1982) UK author, poet and playwright, Benjamin Britten's librettist for the opera The Rape of Lucretia (1946); he gained some acclaim for his sourly vatic drama and poetry in the 1940s, but became very much an outsider before his death; he was generally not thought of as a genre writer. The Dull Ass's Hoof (coll 1941) contains some fantasy plays. Some of the stories in The Perfect Mistress and Other Stories (coll 1969), A Kettle of Fish ...
Sobchack, Vivian
(1940- ) US author of academic film criticism, notably The Limits of Infinity: The American Science Fiction Film 1950-1975 (1980), expanded as Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film (1987), retaining the unaltered text of the earlier book but adding a long final chapter, "Postfuturism", which gives a reading of sf Cinema developed from the critical theories of Fredric ...
Nielsen Hayden, Patrick
(1959- ) US editor and anthologist, born Patrick James Hayden; he legally changed his name in 1979 when he married Teresa Nielsen Hayden. With his wife, he has been active in Fandom, producing the Fanzine Izzard from 1982 to 1987. He has been editorially involved with Tor Books full-time from 1988, and in this association won the 2007, ...
Lucian
(circa 125- after 180) Syrian-Greek author, known also as Lucian of Samosata; born in Samosata, capital of Commagene, in Syria (now modern Turkey). He early became an advocate and practised at Antioch, but soon set out on the travels which were to help provide the verisimilitude underlying the fantastic surface of some of his works. He visited Greece, Italy and Gaul, studied philosophy in Athens, and eventually became procurator of part of Egypt, where ...
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. ...