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Wednesday 13 May 2026
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.
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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Hoffman, Kurt
An Australian pseudonym or more likely a House Name used on one novella-length Scientific Thrillers tale of sf interest, Blackmarket Brains (1949 chap), in which a surgeon is forced to engage in criminal acts of Identity Transfer by transplanting brains of criminals into innocent bodies. [JC]
Planetary Romance
Any sf tale whose primary venue (excluding contemporary or Near-Future versions of Earth) is a planet, and whose plot turns to a significant degree upon the nature of that venue, can be described as a planetary romance. For the term to apply properly, however, it is not enough that a tale simply be set on a world: James Blish's A Case of Conscience (September 1953 If; exp 1958), for instance, ...
Massively Multiplayer Online Game
Term used to describe a type of Videogame in which large numbers of players interact with each other in a persistent Online World. Various forms exist, including Space Sims, exemplified by EVE Online (2003), and First Person Shooters, such as the science-fictional PlanetSide (2003 Verant Interactive, Win) ...
Volodine, Antoine
Primary pseudonym of French-Russian translator and author Jean Desvignes (1949/1950- ), active from the 1980s, who has also published as by Lutz Bassmann, Manuela Draeger, Volup Golpiez, Infernus Iohannus (with others), Elli Kronauer. His first novel, Biographie comparée de Jorian Murgrave ["A Comparative Biography of Jorian Murgrave"] (1985), which is sf, fragmentarily examines aspects of the fugitive life on Earth of a seemingly monstrous ...
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 ...