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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 ...
Masters, Dexter
(1908-1989) US editor and author, mostly resident in the UK in later life (due to McCarthyite persecution in the 1950s), whose only sf novel was The Cloud Chamber (1971), in which World War Three drives the nations of the world Underground. As an editor, he is significant for One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb (anth 1946 chap) with Katherine May, in ...
Christopher, Adam
Working name of New Zealand-born author Adam Christopher McGechan (1978- ), in the UK from 2006, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Devil in Chains, Part One" in Pantechnicon for September 2008, soon followed by "The Devil in Chains, Part Two" (March 2009 Pantechnicon). His first novel, Empire State (2012), is a noir thriller set in a retro Alternate World or ...
Polygon
Russian animated short film (1977). Original title Poligon; vt Proving Ground; vt Firing Range. Soyuzmultfilm. Directed by Anatoly Petrov. Written by Sever Gansovsky. Voice cast includes Alexander Beliavsky, Anatoly Kuznetsov, S Martynov, Oleg Mokshantsev and Vsevolod Yakut. Ten minutes. Colour. / Polygon is based on Gansovsky's short story "Poligon" (1966 Vokrug sveta #9; trans Matthew J O'Connell as "The Proving ...
Skyhorse, Brando
(1973- ) US editor and author whose complex family past has been transformational significance in his work, as unpacked in a memoir, Take This Man (2014); he was born Brando Kelly Ulloa, of Mexican-American parentage, but raised in the belief that he was the son of Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a Native American activist. Issues of Identity – of specifically American identity, which is to say problems inherent to a nation ...
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 ...