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Friday 13 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.
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Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Schoch, Tim
(1949- ) US author moderately active in various genres; of sf interest is Creeps: An Alien in our School (1985), a Young Adult tale set in a high school haunted by an Alien; and Flash Fry, Private Eye (1986), which incorporates fantasy elements into a similar mix. [JC]
Robinson, Philip Bedford
(1926-1986) UK author and computer programmer who worked in India 1950-1958. The deracinated protagonist of Masque of a Savage Mandarin (1969; vt Masque of a Savage Mandarin: A Comedy of Horrors 1974) takes symbolic revenge upon the world via the systematic destruction – by electromagnetic Rays resembling microwave radiation – of a hapless, innocent neighbour's brain (see Horror in SF). In the ...
Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, The
Mexican film (1957); original title La Momia Azteca contra el Robot Humano; vt The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot. Cinematográfica Calderón S.A. Directed by Rafel Portillo. Written by Alfredo Salazar. Cast includes Crox Alvarado, Rosita Arenas, Luis Aceves Castañeda, Ángel Di Stefani and Ramón Gay. 64 minutes. Black and white. / Scientist Dr Eduardo Almada (Gay), joined ...
Hartman, Emerson B
(?1888/1889-1969) US author whose Lunarchia: That Strange World Beneath the Moon's Crust (1937) began a projected six-volume interplanetary sequence in the Edgar Rice Burroughs vein with the discovery of a colourful civilization within the Moon. No further volumes appeared. In The Giant of the Sierras (1945) a Lost World is discovered in California inhabited by giants, ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...