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Sunday 16 November 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 10 November 2025
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McMasters, William H
(1874-1968) US journalist, playwright and author whose Revolt: An American Novel (1919) he claimed, with some justification, to have had a central role in 1920 in the exposure of Charles Ponzi (1882-1949), who gave his name to the pyramid scheme where new deposits are used to pay off old investors until the structure implodes. Revolt: An American Novel (1919) is a Near Future tale set in 1940, when two American political parties are ...
Schorer, Mark
(1908-1977) US author and academic, little associated with the literatures of the fantastic except for some stories with August Derleth, with whom he shared a birth city as well as attendance at the University of Wisconsin, where they wrote sf like "Riders in the Sky" (May 1928 Weird Tales), about Moon dwellers who come down to Earth to eat folk. Some of their later work was assembled as ...
Donner, Richard
Working name of Richard Donald Schwartzberg (1930-2021), US Television and Cinema director and producer whose early genre or genre-adjacent work for the small screen included directing six episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) – including the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (11 October 1963) written by Richard Matheson – ...
International Fantasy Award
UK-based Award, made annually from 1951 to 1955 and finally in 1957. The idea came from four UK enthusiasts: John Beynon Harris (John Wyndham), Frank Cooper, G Ken Chapman and Leslie Flood. The International Fantasy Awards were presented to the authors of the best fantasy or sf book of the year, with a second category for the best nonfiction book likely to be of interest to sf readers; the nonfiction ...
Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds
US Pulp magazine, an attempt to breathe fresh life into the more traditional air-War pulp, Battle Birds, the volume number of which was continued, beginning with volume 5 #4 and ending with volume 8 #3. In this final incarnation it saw 12 issues, July 1934-July 1935; published by Popular Publications; edited by Rogers Terrill. Each issue contained a genuine Near-Future sf ...
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 ...