SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 10 July 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 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Döblin, Alfred
(1878-1957) German physician and author who began publishing before World War One, in which he served as a physician; in exile because of his Jewish background 1933-1945. Die Ermordung Einer Butterblume und andere Erzählungen ["The Murder of a Buttercup"] (coll 1913; exp 1962; trans Damion Searles as Bright Magic 2017) assembles hectic fantasies and parables, some powerful, including the title ...
McNelly, Willis E
(1920-2003) US academic, sf critic and editor long based at California State University at Fullerton, where he gave what were among the earlier sf classes in the USA. His anthologies include the Mars-themed Mars, We Love You (anth 1971; vt The Book of Mars 1976) edited with Jane Hipolito, Above the Human Landscape: A Social Science Fiction Anthology (anth 1972) edited with Leon E Stover and ...
Russen, David
(? -? ) UK author whose life has not been traced in detail, though records from 1690 to 1703 point to a life in Kent, perhaps mostly in Hythe. He is of Proto-Sf interest for an extended book-review published in book form, ...
Shapiro, Stanley
(1925-1990) US screenwriter – he won an Academy Award for Pillow Talk (1959) – and author. In his sf novel, A Time to Remember (1986), filmed for Television as Running Against Time (1990), a man travels (see Time Travel) back through time to create an Alternate World whose Jonbar Point will be his prevention of ...
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 ...