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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 ...
Freeman, Mrs A M
(? -? ) US author, active from the 1870s, whose Daughters of Cain in the Land of Nod: A Satirical Romance (1893) is a Lost Race novel in which a matriarchal Utopia, based on strong Feminist arguments, is discovered in Africa. Gender roles are reversed. Religion is deprecated. [JC]
Donohue, Trevor
(1939- ) Australian author who began to publish work of genre interest in 1981 with "Unnamed" for PM with Paul Collins – with whom he has collaborated on other work as well. Savage Tomorrow (1983), a Post-Holocaust tale set in a raddled world not dissimilar in its trashy exorbitance to that illuminated in the Mad Max films. [JC]
Ogden, Aimee
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Light of the Moon, the Strength of the Storm, the Warmth of the Sun" in Frozen Fairy Tales (anth 2015) edited by Kate Wolford. Her first-written novel, Local Star (2021), combines Space Opera action, partly set in a Space Habitat under threat from something like a ...
Washburn, Mark
(1948- ) US author of The Armageddon Game: A Novel of Suspense (1977), a Cold War tale whose protagonist manufactures an atom bomb, the threatened outcome, World War Two, being narrowly averted; this title should not be confused with the entirely nonfantastic The Armageddon Game (1985) by James N Frey. The Omega Threat (1980), is set ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...