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Monday 13 April 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.
Site updated on 6 April 2026
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Zap Gun
A usually facetious term for the sf Blaster, Ray Gun or Stunner. Its first recorded appearance in print, according to the online Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, was in an October 1934 US newspaper ad for a Buck Rogers spinoff Toy: "Buck Rogers Zap Gun 35¢". Brian W Aldiss's ...
Gull, Cyril Ranger
Working name of UK journalist and author Arthur Edward Ranger Gull (1875-1923) who added Cyril to his name at the beginning of his career; moderately prolific under his own name, though he was also well-known under his pseudonym Guy Thorne; he began to publish sf with "The Automaton" in The Ludgate for January 1900 with Reginald Bacchus (1874-1945), one of whose later romans à clef features an identifiable Gull in scandalous situations. It may be because he did indeed lead ...
Khanna, Rajan
(1974- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Furies" in Shimmer for Autumn 2007. He is of interest for the Ben Gold sequence, comprising Falling Sky (2014) and Rising Tide (2015), set in a Near Future Dystopian world savagely depopulated by what was almost certainly an engineered virus-based ...
F.P.1 Doesn't Answer
Film (1932; vt Secrets of F.P.1 UK; vt Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay Australia). UFA. Technical credits as for F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht, but starring Conrad Veidt, Jill Esmond and Leslie Fenton. 90 minutes. Black and white. / This is the shorter English-language version of the German film, and was shot at the same time. The acting is better than in the German version. [PN] links / ...
Ascher, Maurice
(1873-1965) German author, much of his nonfiction being studies in Judaism and Jewish issues. He is of sf interest for Gulliver's Neue Reise ["Gulliver's New Journey"] (1915), a Fantastic Voyage tale based on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735), Gulliver in this case being an aviator who makes a crash-landing on an unknown ...
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 ...