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Monday 13 April 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.
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Strieber, Whitley
(1945- ) US author, much better known for horror novels – like The Wolfen (1978) (see Horror in SF; Werewolves) and the Hunger sequence beginning with The Hunger (1981) (see Vampires) – than for his sf, though he has continued to produce the latter intermittently throughout his career, with an emphasis on the ...
Gidron, Martin J
(1969- ) US author of The Severed Wing (2002), a Sidewise Award-winning Alternate History tale whose Jonbar Point is Theodore Roosevelt's winning a third term as American president, which leads to an earlier but milder World War One, one that averts the end of civilization and the reparations scandal which gave birth ...
Poltergeists
These imagined Supernatural Creatures, whose German name means "noisy ghost", have attracted some sporadic sf interest. Though never directly seen, poltergeists supposedly move or throw small articles around, break crockery (which is sometimes also hurled across a room while remaining miraculously unbroken) and so forth. Their reality was once enough of an accepted phenomenon that Edmund Crispin used a highly active ...
Tyers, Kathy
Working name of US author Kathleen Moore Tyers (1952- ). She began writing with her Firebird sequence, Firebird (1987; rev 1999) and Fusion Fire (1988; rev 2000), set in a Planetary Romance venue replete with colourful planetary cultures, a matriarchy suffering internecine dynastic conflicts, an overarching Federation, space Invasions, palace politics and ...
Brain Eaters, The
Film (1958). Corinthian Productions, American International Pictures. Executive Producer Samuel Z Arkoff. Directed by Bruno VeSota. Executive director Roger Corman (uncredited). Written by Gordon Urquhart, based without permission on The Puppet Masters (September-November 1951 Galaxy; 1951; text restored 1990) by Robert A ...
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 ...