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Wednesday 15 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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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Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers
US tv series (1953-1954). Columbia Broadcasting System for CBS-TV. Executive Producer: William Dozier. Produced by John Haggott. Directed by George Gould. Writers included Nelson S Bond, Don Moore. Cast includes Arthur Batanides, John Boruff, Bruce Hall, Cliff Robertson and Jack Weston. 58 30-minute episodes. Black and white. / In the mid-twenty-second century, Rod Brown (Hall) and his fellow Rocket Rangers operate from the base Omega, protecting ...
Stark, Ed
(? - ) US author of Ties to various games (see Games and Sports), including Shatterzone: Beyond the 'Zone (1993), novelizing a Role Playing Game set in a Space Opera universe. His other ties are to fantasy enterprises. [JC]
Bowman, W E
(1911-1985) UK draughtsman, civil engineer and author whose best-known work is The Ascent of Rum Doodle (1956), a Parody of British mountaineering expedition reports which quickly gained a cult following. An utterly inept team led by the pompous, Pooteresque "Binder" (his codename in walkie-talkie communications), and including an easily distracted Scientist, ascends or rather fails to ascend the titular mountain. The ...
Shaffer, Eugene Carl
(? - ) US author of three sf novels: The Last Breath (1974), in which apocalyptic Disasters force the evacuation of Earth; The Clones (1980), which takes a dim view of Clones, as they will revolt and must be exterminated; and Panic 7 (1980), in which civilization is again threatened. [JC]
Gárcia y Robertson, R
(1949- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Flying Mountain" in Amazing for May 1987; some of his short fiction is assembled as The Moon Maid and Other Fantastic Adventures (coll 1998). Much of his work, short and long, either involves Time Travel to various eras, or is set in them; his range of protagonists is, in ethnic terms, extremely wide, and his use of characters ...
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 ...