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Friday 20 September 2024
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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Berkeley, Reginald
(1890-1935) UK soldier, politician – Liberal Member of Parliament 1922-1924 – playwright and author in various genres. Apparently inadvertently, he created one of the lasting myths of World War One in his novel about the German execution of Edith Cavell, Dawn: A Biographical Novel of Edith Cavell (1928), in which a German soldier named Rammler refuses to participate in the firing squad, and is himself executed. Berkeley's belief in ...
Kastle, Herbert D
(1924-1987) US author best known outside the genre, who began publishing occasional sf stories with "The York Problem" in If for February 1955. He edited the final two issues of Startling Stories (Summer and Fall 1955). His one sf novel, The Reassembled Man (1964; exp vt Edward Berner Is Alive Again! 1975; vt The Three Lives of Edward Berner 1976) depicts without excessive originality the ...
Bing, Stanley
Pseudonym of US television executive, humorous essayist and author Gil Schwartz (1951-2020), a columnist for Fortune magazine for many years following a decade at Esquire. His first novel, Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business (1998), in which a world-transforming project is never actually described, shies just short of the fantastic. Bing is of sf interest for the Near Future Immortal Life: (A Soon to Be True Story) ...
Von der Passer, Arnold
Pseudonym of German architect and author Franz Ludwig (or Franz-Levy) Hoffmann (1851-1917). His sf novel, Mene Tekel!: Eine Entdeckungsreise nach Europe ["Mene Tekel!: A Journey of Discovery to Europe"] (1893), places a Future History of Europe from 1898 to 2398 within the frame of an expedition (see Fantastic Voyage) undertaken in the latter year by a team of Freilanders anxious to discover what has been ...
Barjavel, René
(1911-1985) French author, active in later life as a screenwriter and journalist. His first novel to be translated, Ravage (1943; trans Damon Knight as Ashes, Ashes 1967), describes a France driven inwards into rural quiescence in 2052 by a great Disaster, as the Sun becomes volatile, causing the sudden disappearance of electricity from the world; the corrupting effects of ...
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 ...