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Saturday 12 July 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 7 July 2025
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Crick, Donald
(1916-2005) Australian author, the last of his five novels being The Moon to Play With (1981), an sf Satire with a fairly mild touch. [JC]
Stamper, Joseph
(1886-1974) UK author, whose peripatetic early life is recorded in his autobiography, Less Than the Dust; Or, the Memoirs of a Tramp. He is of modest sf interest for "The Bote Upon the Watter" (1933), a Time Travel tale whose unscrupulous protagonist takes a bevy of young women to various periods, including the era of Atlantis, but cannot hang on to them very long. [JC]
Spindizzy
In its day, one of the best-loved items of sf Terminology. The spindizzy is the Antigravity Invention used to drive flying Cities through the Galaxy at Faster-than-Light speeds in James Blish's Okie series. This was collected as Cities in Flight (omni 1970), though Blish was using the ...
Dorea, Gumercindo Rocha
(1924-2021) Brazilian publisher regarded as the most important in the history of Brazilian sf, Gumercindo Rocha Dorea was born in Ilhéus, the town in the State of Bahia made famous by Jorge Amado's novels. Dorea was mainly responsible for the First Wave of Brazilian Science Fiction (1958-1972). / Dorea founded Edições GRD (today, GRD Edições) in 1956, and launched his coleção (a numbered book line) ...
Patton, Frank
Apparently a Ziff-Davis house name, used 1943-1954 for stories and essays in Amazing, Fantastic and Science Stories by the editor Raymond A Palmer, Richard S Shaver, Leroy Yerxa and perhaps others. [DRL] links / ...
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 ...