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Thursday 26 May 2022
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 23 May 2022
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Trow, George W S
(1943-2006) US journalist, playwright, polemicist and author, probably best known for a work of moderately savage, socially conservative criticism of the American Media Landscape, Within the Context of No Context (17 November 1980 The New Yorker; 1981). He is of modest sf interest for the stories assembled in Bullies (coll 1980), surreal Satires set in unclearly discernible Alternate Worlds. As George Swift Trow he co-scripted the film Savages (1972), directed by James Ivory. [JC]
Martin, John
(1789-1854) UK painter and illustrator with a spectacularly melodramatic imagination, whose vast canvases depicting cataclysmic biblical scenes of Disaster and the End of the World have informed much modern fantasy Illustration. Even his delicate mezzotint illustrations for such editions as Paradise Lost (1824) by John Milton (1608-1674) have an epic quality. His paintings typically feature multitudes of tiny figures and fantastic architecture under turbulent skies; Ray Harryhausen acknowledged ...
Frazar, Douglas
(1836-1896) US soldier and author whose Perseverance Island; Or, the Robinson Crusoe of the Nineteenth Century (1885) is a Robinsonade. After sailing to the South Pacific, in order to establish a Utopia there with his fellows, William Anderson is trapped alone on a desert Island between 1865 and 1880, when he is rescued. During his sojourn he discovers, and kills, a prehistoric sea serpent nearly 150 feet in length (see Monsters); he also comes into possession of a vast pirate treasure. More ...
Sheers, Owen
(1974- ) Fiji-born poet and author, in Wales from early childhood; his Hitler Wins tale, Resistance (2007), filmed as Resistance (2011), depicts life in a hidden part of Wales near Abergavenny after the Allies' failure of D-Day has been followed by a German Invasion of England. The tale focuses on both the men who leave to join a secret resistance movement and upon the women they leave behind, who must attempt to survive the coming tyranny. [JC]
Hadley, Arthur T
(1924-2015) US journalist and author, not to be confused with his grandfather, the nonfiction writer and academic Arthur Twining Hadley (1856-1930); in his sf Satire, The Joy Wagon (1958), a Robot with a Computer brain known as Minivac runs for President in a sharply comic send-up of the US electoral system, and almost wins. [JC] see also: Politics. /
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. Criticized at first for its failure to annotate its findings – so that, for instance, pseudonyms used for sf could not be ...