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Saturday 11 April 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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Empson, William
(1906-1984) UK literary critic, theorist, poet and author, perhaps the most brilliant (and cantankerous) British thinker about literature in the twentieth century, most famously for Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930; rev 1947), published just after he was stripped of his degree and normal academic career by Cambridge University for a sexual misdemeanour (a condom was discovered in his rooms), and for Some Versions of Pastoral (1935), whose analysis of "Christ and ...
Edogawa Ranpo
Main pseudonym of Japanese mystery author Tarō Hirai (1894-1965), sometimes romanized as Edogawa Rampo, a name derived from the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allan Poe, who was his literary idol. An amateur translator of Arthur Conan Doyle during his studies in economics at Waseda University, Edogawa began publishing detective stories and macabre chillers commencing with "Ni-sen ...
Hall, Rodney
(1935- ) UK-born poet, musician, editor and author, in Australia from 1949, active as a poet from around 1962; Chairperson 1991-1994 of the Australia Council, a body responsible for government arts policy and funding. Several of his novels contain fantasy elements. In Just Relations (1982), for instance, the metaphorical Suspended Animation of the cast approaches the literal. The Yandilli Trilogy, comprising ...
Kincaid, Paul
(1952- ) UK critic, award administrator and author; partner of Maureen Kincaid Speller from 1986 until her death in 2022 (they married in 1993). After an early sale to New Writings in SF which remains unpublished because the series ended, his first short story, "The Second Coming" appeared in a semi-professional magazine, Orbis, in 1984. His first fully professional publication was ...
Gojira
Film (1954 Japan; exp with new footage 1956 US; vt Godzilla, King of the Monsters; vt Godzilla). Toho/Embassy. Directed by Ishirō Honda. Written by Takeo Murata, Honda, based on Kaiju Gojira ["Monster Godzilla"] (1954) by Shigeru Kayama (1904-1975). Cast includes Akihiko Hirata, Raymond Burr (US version), Takashi Shimura and Akira Takarada. 98 minutes cut to 81 minutes for US release. Black and white. / This was the first of a long series of Japanese ...
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 ...