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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 ...
Goliath Awaits
Made-for-tv film (1981). Larry White Productions/Columbia Picture Television. Syndicated. Produced by Hugh Benson. Directed by Kevin Connor. Written by Richard M Bluel and Pat Fielder from a story by Bluel, Fielder, and Benson. Cast includes Robert Forster, Frank Gorshin, Mark Harmon, Christopher Lee and Emma Samms. 200 minutes, cut to 186 minutes, 110 minutes for home video release. Colour. / 1939: early in World War Two, the British liner ...
Worlds Beyond
US Digest-size magazine; three issues, monthly December 1950 to February 1951, published by Hillman Periodicals; edited by Damon Knight. Worlds Beyond was divided between original and reprint material, and between sf and fantasy. New stories of note included "Null-P" by William Tenn (January 1951) and Harry Harrison's first story, "Rock Diver" (February 1951); ...
Fawcett, Edgar
(1847-1904) US author, known primarily for his work outside the sf field. Most of his 40 or so novels belong to the realist school associated with his contemporary William Dean Howells, but (like Howells) Fawcett also wrote fantastic works. He provided a manifesto for a species of fiction which he called "realistic romance", which is very similar to some Definitions of SF: "Stories where the astonishing and peculiar ...
Wise, David
(1930-2018) US author and journalist, with the New York Herald-Tribune in the 1950s and 1960s, whose works include both fiction and nonfiction about espionage and US politics. Of sf interest is The Samarkand Dimension (1987), a spy thriller in which Soviet sabotage of a US ICBM launch test has disastrous results and is ascribed to Psi Powers, the enemy having overridden the course controls via Telekinesis. The ...
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 ...