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Sunday 7 December 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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Butler, William Francis
(1838-1910) Irish soldier and author whose military involvement in the Riel Rebellion in western Canada resulted in his recommending the creation of what would eventually become the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He was in active service, with the rank of colonel, when he published anonymously a Battle of Dorking tale, The Invasion of England: Told Twenty Years After (1882) as By an Old Soldier, in which Germany mounts an ...
Schätzing, Frank
(1957- ) German author initially best known for Der Schwarm (2004; trans Sally-Ann Spencer as The Swarm 2007), a vivid expression of Horror in SF: beginning off Peru, ocean currents begin actively to assault and drown humans, governed by a vast Hive Mind dwelling Under the Sea (see Gaia) whose ...
Street, A G
(1892-1966) UK farmer, broadcaster, journalist and author, in active service during World War One; best known for his essays and broadcasts on agricultural topics. He is of sf interest for one novel, Already Walks Tomorrow (1938), a Near Future Ecological tale reflecting his comprehensive knowledge and concern for the land; soil-exhaustion causes a worldwide environmental ...
Web Terror Stories
US Digest-size weird fiction magazine. Published by Robert C Sproul (1920-2007) as Candar Publishing Company. Credited editor was Sproul. Eight issues, August 1962 to June 1965. Publication, nominally quarterly, was in fact erratic. / This title has a complex history involving several name changes. It began as Saturn, which Sproul had published briefly from 1957 to 1958; this continued as the crime magazine ...
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 ...