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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 ...
Roberson, Chris
(1970- ) US publisher and author, who founded Clockwork Storybook, a print-on-demand (pod) publisher, in 2000, through which he published his first books, Voices of Thunder (coll 2000), Cybermancy Incorporated (coll of linked stories 2001), and the first of his Celestial Empire sequence most of whose episodes are set in an Alternate History dominated by a China that had never isolated itself from the ...
Singh, Vandana
(1962- ) Indian academic and author with a PhD in theoretical physics, currently Professor of physics and environment in the Department of Environment, Society and Sustainability at Framingham State University, Massachusetts. She began to publish work of genre interest with "The Room on the Roof" in Polyphony (anth 2002) edited by Jay Lake and Deborah Layne, which was followed up by such ambitious work as "Delhi" (in ...
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 ...
Pereira Mendes, H
(1852-1937) UK-born rabbi, academic and author, in the USA from 1877, where he wrote prolifically in many genres. Looking Ahead: Twentieth Century Happenings (1899) tells of various socialist upheavals, beginning in the Near Future and moving forward, which lead to several world wars and are defeated, in the end, only by an alliance of theocratical Christians and Jews, which also establishes in Palestine a Jewish homeland ruled by a descendant of ...
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 ...