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Wednesday 25 June 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 23 June 2025
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Symons, J H
(1873-1951) UK author, who also wrote as by Maurice Wolmar; some of his fiction is of sf interest. In The Supreme Mystery (1917), a Scientist sends the spirit of a medium into various past eras, upon which, as a kind of Time Viewer, she reports back. The protagonist later sends her into the future as well. The End of the Marriage Vow (1928) also features a Machine capable of ...
Baker, Kage
(1952-2010) US author who was born Mary Kate Genevieve Baker but had legally changed her name to Kage Baker by the age of twenty; she worked in insurance and the theatre before publishing In the Garden of Iden (1997; vt In the Garden of Iden: A Novel of the Company 1998), the first in the series of Company or Dr Zeus stories, which occupied most of her career. The sequence, whose implications gradually darkened, focuses on the actions of a cadre of ...
Olša, Jaroslav, Jr
(1964- ) Czech and Czechoslovak diplomat whose posts include those of Ambassador to Zimbabwe (2000-2006), South Korea (2008-2014) and the Philippines (2014-2018); Consul General in Los Angeles (2020-current); author of books on history, art and literature of Asia and Africa; also sf editor, translator and bibliographer. Olša started the major Czechoslovak fanzine Ikarie XB (1986-1989), which turned into the first ...
Tales of Wonder
UK Pulp magazine, sixteen issues [Summer] 1937 to Spring 1942, quarterly to 1940, thereafter slightly irregular, numbered consecutively, the first undated. Published by World's Work, London; edited by Walter Gillings. / Tales of Wonder, though preceded in 1934 by the sf Boys' Paper, Scoops, was the first adult UK sf magazine, and the use of the term "science ...
Gull, Cyril Ranger
Working name of UK journalist and author Arthur Edward Ranger Gull (1875-1923) who added Cyril to his name at the beginning of his career; moderately prolific under his own name, though he was also well-known under his pseudonym Guy Thorne; he began to publish sf with "The Automaton" in The Ludgate for January 1900 with Reginald Bacchus (1874-1945), one of whose later romans à clef features an identifiable Gull in scandalous situations. It may be because he did indeed lead ...
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 ...