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Sunday 11 October 2026
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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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Super Science Stories
1. US Pulp magazine which ran in two series for a total of 31 issues. Both series were run by Popular Publications, New York, the first under their imprint Fictioneers, Inc, which allowed them to pay cheaper word rates: 16 issues March 1940 to May 1943, with three consecutive 1941 issues (March, May and August) titled Super Science Novels; edited by Frederik Pohl until August 1941, then Ejler ...
Chaon, Dan
(1964- ) US author, most of whose work may be defined as horror (see Horror in SF), the topoi of which are scrutinized with sophisticated intensity; active from the early 1980s; his early stories were assembled as Fitting Ends and Other Stories (coll 1995) and Among the Missing (coll 2001). Like all his work, they are hauntedly illuminating about the family romance between the world and the storyable, ...
Purkey, Ruth Angell
(1926-2011) US playwright, two of whose several dramas are of some sf interest. Hangs Over my Head (first performed 1956; in The Best Short Plays of 1955-56, anth 1956) is set just before an increasingly likely World War Three; a cast rehearsing a play, lacking any script to deal with their private and public dramas, accost a Mysterious Stranger in search of a plot (see Luigi ...
Chronicles of Riddick, The
Film (2004). Universal Pictures presents a Radar Pictures/One Race Films production. Written and directed by David Twohy. Cast includes Alexa Davalos, Keith David, Judi Dench, Vin Diesel, Colm Feore, Thandie Newton and Karl Urban. Theatrical cut 119 minutes; Director's Cut 135 minutes. Colour. / Five years on from the events of Pitch Black (2000), Riddick is drawn from hiding to combat the Necromongers, an ...
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 ...