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Thursday 19 February 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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Boulle, Pierre
(1912-1994) French author who trained as an electrical engineer and spent eight years in Malaysia as a planter and soldier. His experience of the Orient permeated much of his early work, which was generally not sf; Le pont sur la rivière Kwaï (1952; trans Xan Fielding as The Bridge on the River Kwai 1954) remains his best-known novel. Boulle uses moral fable to pinpoint human absurdities, and his relatively large body of work in the sf genre is a good ...
Legge, J G
(1861-1940) Hong Kong-born author, in UK from an early age; his sf Satire, The Millennium (1927), mocks attempts to reform a Near Future Britain. [JC]
Davidson, John
(1857-1909) Scottish poet, playwright, schoolteacher and author, best known in the first capacity for his Fleet Street Eclogues (coll 1893 chap); though not specifically fantastic, his intensely urban poetry, much of which focuses on science and technology from an almost mystical point of view, had a shaping influence now forgotten. Some tales, like Perfervid: The Career of Ninian Jamieson (1890), contain unfocused elements of the fantastic, partly through spoof ...
Margroff, Robert E
(1930-2015) US author who published his first story, "Monster Tracks", in If for October 1964 solo, but became best known for the collaborations with Piers Anthony which comprise all his book-length work. These began with two sf novels, The Ring (1968) – the titular device being imposed on criminals to provide an artificial conscience that punishes conscious wrongdoing with severe pain (see ...
Wicked City
Japanese Original Video Animation (OVA) (1987). Madhouse. Based on the novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi. Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Written by Norio Osada. Voice cast includes Takeshi Aono, Toshiko Fujita, Ichirō Nagai, Yūsaku Yara and Mari Yokoo. 82 minutes. Colour. / A woman (Yokoo), seemingly the one he has been dating for three months, invites Renzaburo Taki (Yara) back to her ...
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 ...