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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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Cowper, Richard
Pseudonym of UK author John Middleton Murry Jr (1926-2002), son of the famous critic; Cowper also published four non-sf novels under the name Colin Murry, beginning with The Golden Valley (1958); and, as Colin Middleton Murry – Colin being an early nickname, though he was normally addressed as John – two autobiographical volumes, One Hand Clapping (1975; vt I at the Keyhole 1975), which deals mainly with his relationship with his difficult, ...
Markson, David
(1927-2010) US author of the stringently Modernist Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988), whose protagonist may be the last human (see Last Man) left on Earth; the novel is couched as an array of assertive, gnomic paragraphs in the style of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), and similarly dramatizes the gap (or perhaps aporia) between the world and the propositions ...
Robertson, Mike
(? - ) US author of sf interest exclusively for Ties to the de facto Shared World of H Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History: Federation, specifically the novel Space Viking (November 1962-June 1963 Analog; 1963). Robertson's linked Space Operas, all written in collaboration with ...
Altman, Robert
(1925-2006) US Cinema director, producer and screenwriter perhaps best known for directing the films M*A*S*H (1970) and Nashville (1975). His first film of clear genre interest is Countdown (1967), a Space-Flight thriller anticipating NASA's 1969 landing on the Moon. This was followed by the more fantastical movies ...
DeVito, Joe
(1957- ) US artist and sculptor, sometimes as Joseph DeVito, who graduated from the Parsons School of Design in 1981, studied further at the New York Art Students League, and takes a special interest in palaeontological subjects. He has produced many genre book and magazine covers since 1984, including Dinosaur images for the vt of David A Drake's Time Safari (coll of linked stories 1982; exp ...
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 ...