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Friday 5 December 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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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Hargreaves, Gerald
(1881-1972) UK politician, judge, composer, playwright and author, in active service during World War One. He is of some sf interest for his only published play, Atalanta: A Story of Atlantis: A Fantasy with Music (1948) as by His Honour Judge Sir Gerald Hargreaves (see Atlantis), a musical drama based, according to his introduction, on Plato's Critias (circa 350 BCE) ...
Far Sector
US Online Magazine that paid professional SFWA rates, that ran from April 1998 to January 2007, 72 issues, published by Clocktower Fiction, San Diego, California, edited by John T Cullen. Early issues were irregular but it strove for a monthly schedule which it achieved through 2001 to 2003 before becoming bimonthly in 2004, quarterly in 2005 and monthly again in 2006. It was launched under the title Outside but that was also the name of a backpacking ...
Turton, Godfrey
(1901-1985) UK author of such fantasies as The Devil's Churchyard (1970) and The Festival of Flora: A Story of Ancient and Modern Times (1972). He remains of some sf interest for There Was Once a City (1927), in which an ancient City is inundated through a Disaster whose causation is Equipoisal between supernatural hubris and natural cataclysm; and ...
Bulis, Christopher
(1956- ) UK author involved in various projects for the Doctor Who universe, beginning with Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Shadowmind (1994). Writers in these projects are given some leeway to explore their own interests; Bulis, in tales like Doctor Who: The New Adventures: Tempest (1998), shows a clear affinity for intricate puzzle-driven plotting. The Moon's Last Fortress (2013 ebook) is a ...
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 ...