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Friday 29 September 2023
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.
Site updated on 25 September 2023
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Van Kampen, Robert D
(1938-1999) US businessman and author, whose fundamentalist Christian beliefs, focused on the Rapture, tacitly shape his only sf novel, The Fourth Reich (1997), which Equipoisally creates a Hitler Wins scenario through the recovery of Hitler's soul from Hell and its insertion through Cloning into a human embryo. He soon becomes ruler of all Russia, and as the anti- ...
Religion
Familiar Definitions of SF imply that there is nothing more alien to its concerns than religion. However, many of the roots of Proto SF are embedded in traditions of speculative fiction closely associated with the religious imagination, and contemporary sf recovered a strong interest in certain mystical and transcendental themes and images when it moved beyond the Taboos imposed by the ...
Chan, Jessamine
(? - ) US editor and author whose first novel, set in a very Near Future Dystopian America, anguishingly traces a mother's potential loss of her child through her effective criminalization in this vision of a land dominated by fundamentalist Religion. Her only recourse seems to be to undergo forced Cultural Engineering ...
Pope, Gustavus W
(1828-1902) US physician and author, in whose sf series Romances of the Planets – comprising Romances of the Planets, No. 1: Journey to Mars: The Wonderful World; its Beauty and Splendor; its Mighty Races and Kingdoms; its Final Doom (1894) and Romances of the Planets, No. 2: Journey to Venus: The Primeval World, its Wonderful Creations and Gigantic Monsters (1895) – an American officer visits an advanced Mars, where he ...
Reed, Samuel Rockwell
(1820-1889) US author of a Future War novel, The War of 1886, between the United States and Great Britain [for subtitle see Checklist] (1882), in which, after Canada has once again been attacked from the south, Britain mounts a successful Invasion of America, only to find that victory has brought economic costs, and that defeat has revitalized the US. [JC]
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...