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Sunday 7 December 2025
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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Hailey, Arthur
(1920-2004) UK author, in Canada from 1947, best known for heavily researched novels, like Hotel (1965) and Airport (1968), where an insider intimacy adds frisson to numerous crises; of sf interest is In High Places (1962), a Near Future tale whose focus of intimacy is (uncommonly) the Canadian federal government, and upon the Prime Minister's response to the threat of a US ...
Holdstock, Robert P
(1948-2009) UK author with an MSc in medical zoology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He spent 1971-1974 in medical research before becoming a full-time writer, though he had published his first story, "Pauper's Plot", for New Worlds as early as November 1968 and the amateur magazine Macrocosm in 1971-1972. He wrote much of his short fiction soon after. Among the more notable stories are the ...
Cloukey, Charles
(1912-1931) US author and student whose death at the age of 19 robbed the field of a precocious talent. Cloukey's first sale was made when he was only fifteen, "Sub-Satellite" (March 1928 Amazing). It raised the interesting question of what happens in lunar Gravity when bullets are fired on the Moon. Both writing and plotting were of someone ahead of their years. Cloukey's most accomplished stories were a ...
Slater, W H
(? -? ) UK author in whose Scientific Romance, The Golden Load (1926), a Scientist's Discovery of the secret of synthesizing gold (see Transmutation) leads to the UK government's attempt to repay its war debts to America with faked sovereigns, and to worldwide Disaster. [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 ...