SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Shaviro, Steven
(1954- ) US academic and culture critic, a full-time academic from 1984, with the University of Washington until 2004, and with Wayne State University until his 2023 full-pay suspension for an intemperate utterance online. Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction about Postmodernism (1997) plays on its subject matter through an urgently postmodern idiom. Discognition (2016) examines the nature of consciousness as it might apply to ...
Cohn, Norman
(1915-2007) UK linguistic scholar and historian, who remains best-known for his first work of significance, The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957; exp 1961), a seminal study of medieval European millennial sects, which are here definitively anatomized in terms of their belief in an apocalyptic End of the World (see also Eschatology), which is normally signalled and led by Iconic ...
John W Campbell Memorial Award
Created by Harry Harrison and Brian W Aldiss, this is given annually in July for the best sf novel of the previous year published in English, selected by a committee of academic critics and sf writers. The membership of the jury has undergone a number of changes, and the award has been variously administered from first the USA, then the UK, Ireland, Sweden and then back to the USA at the University of Kansas at Lawrence in ...
Salwowski, Mark
(1953- ) British artist. He moved with his family to Australia at the age of eleven, graduated from high school, and obtained two years of artistic training at college until a motorcycle accident ended his educational career. He soon went to work for a printing company, eventually serving as its Senior Product Coordinator, before going into business as a freelance artist. Returning to Britain in 1984, he began receiving assignments to paint sf and ...
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 ...