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Thursday 24 April 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.
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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Old Scout, An
House Name for authors working for the Boys' Papers publisher, Frank Tousey. Of sf interest under this name is Lost in the Great Basin (5 October-30 November 1889 The Boys of New York as by Kit Clyde 1907), which sets an Underground Lost World within a Western frame; the inhabitants of this world boast a complex civilization, which does not save ...
Wood, James Playsted
(1905-1983) US teacher, editor and author whose works included a range of nonfiction as well as tales for the children and the Young Adult market. Of sf interest is The Mammoth Parade (1969), in which an eccentric entrepreneur discovers a Siberian Mammoth (see Prehistoric SF) in Rhode Island, and goes to ground with it in Central Park (see New York). Some ...
Mayo, The Earl of
Working name of Irish politician and author, Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke (1851-1927), 7th Earl of Mayo, whose Future War novel, The War Cruise of the "Aries" (1894), pits Britain against France, the battle turning on the use of a new Invention, a kind of mobile battering ram the size of a ship. [JC]
Torgeson, Roy
(1936-1990) US editor, noted mainly for the competent Chrysalis series of Original Anthologies beginning with Chrysalis (anth 1977) and ending with Chrysalis #10 (anth 1983). A second sequence ran for only two volumes: Other Worlds 1 (anth 1979) and Other Worlds #2 (anth 1980). The 1977 Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine Checklist and Price Guide 1923-1976 ...
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 ...