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Sunday 7 June 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 2 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
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 ...
Gillings, Walter
(1912-1979) UK journalist and editor, active in Fandom (where he was usually known as Wally Gillings) from the early 1930s, though he also signed as Walter H Gillings; he was a founder in October 1930 of the Ilford Science Literary Circle, the first UK sf club; he attended the 1937 Leeds Convention; and in 1937-1938 he published seven issues of an historic Fanzine, ...
Daimajū Gekitō: Hagane no Oni
Japanese Original Video Animation (OVA) (1987; vt Demon of Steel: Battle of the Great Demon Beasts; vt Steel Devil). AIC. Directed by Toshihiro Hirano. Written by Shō Aikawa. Voice cast includes Toshio Furukawa, Kazuhiko Inoue, Osamu Saka, Mayumi Shō and Sakiko Tamagawa. 60 minutes. Colour. / In 1999 a research station on the island of Sansara discovers a new type of quark ("the quark of Malhuder") (see ...
Reid, T Mayne
(1818-1883) Irish-born UK author, in the US 1840-1849 and 1867-1870, setting several of his most successful novels there, including The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas (March 1865-October 1866 Bentley's Magazine; 1866 2vols). One of the earliest examples of the Western – with Comanches on the warpath, shoot-outs, ambushes, brawls, lynchings, and a nearly invulnerable hero sporting a secret identity – Headless Horseman is also a ghost story, but ...
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 ...