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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 ...
Technocracy
Technocracy as it commonly understood is a government controlled solely by qualified experts, especially Scientists – a system that one might imagine would be popular in the sf community. Yet the literature of sf offers both positive and negative visions of the benefits and drawbacks of such a government (see Politics). There is similar diversity in sf's treatments of a related idea, Eugenics, which ...
Coon, Horace C
(1897-1961) US author, usually of nonfiction on cultural and political and business issues, in whose 43,000 Years Later (1958) Aliens come to a Ruined Earth, become intrigued by the civilization that had destroyed itself 43,000 years before (see Ruins and Futurity), and, through records, explore the twentieth-century world to Satirical effect. They spend ...
Sutton, Paralee Sweeten
(? - ) US author in whose White City (1949) a married couple, their plane hopelessly lost somewhere in the Antarctic, discovers there a Lost Race who communicate by Telepathy and who have established a clement, advanced Utopia. [JC]
Renwick, Brett L
(? - ) UK author of Wired for Chaos (2005), a late example of Cyberpunk whose noir protagonist, a pro in Virtual Reality contact sports, must go down fully-wired mean streets to discover the criminal who decapitated his girl-friend. [JC]
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 ...