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Thursday 4 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.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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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 ...
Odle, E V
(1890-1942) UK editor and author; manager of a munitions factory during World War One; he was the first editor 1926-1936 of the British Argosy Magazine (see The Argosy). As younger brother of the UK illustrator and artist Alan Odle (1888-1948), who was the husband of Dorothy M Richardson (1873-1957), Odle came into close contact with J D Beresford, who had been instrumental in ...
Turton, Stuart
(1980- ) UK journalist and author whose first novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018), is a detective tale set in a late 1920s country house in rural England, a region and era involuntarily accessed by its protagonist through Time Travel. Once in situ, he finds himself in a kind of Godgame, under the control of a mysterious figure who locks him in a state of ...
City Beneath the Sea
1. Made-for-tv film (1970; vt One Hour to Doomsday). Twentieth Century-Fox TV Productions for NBC TV. Directed by Irwin Allen. Written by John Meredyth Lucas from a story by Allen. Cast includes Richard Basehart, Robert Colbert, Joseph Cotton, Rosemary Forsyth, Sugar Ray Robinson, Robert Wagner and Stuart Whitman. 100 minutes, cut to 93 minutes. Colour. / Released outside the USA as a feature film called One Hour to Doomsday, this ...
Timlin, Mark
(1944- ) UK author, almost exclusively of crime thrillers mostly set in London, his most popular series being the Nick Sharman tales; his pseudonyms include Johnny Angelo, Jim Ballantyne, Holly Delatour, Lee Martin, Martin Milk and Tony Williams. The Torturer (1995) as by Ballantyne is horror. Of sf interest is I Spied a Pale Horse (1999), a very Near Future tale in which the ...
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 ...