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Sunday 7 December 2025
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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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Janifer, Laurence M
(1933-2002) US author in several genres and performing musician. Born Larry Mark Harris – a name used for his fiction until 1963 – he reverted to the old family name, which had been discarded by an immigration officer when Janifer's grandfather had gained entry to the America from Poland. Some of his non-sf books – mostly erotica – appeared under the pseudonyms Alfred Blake and Barbara Wilson; other pseudonyms (almost never for works in the fields of the fantastic) ...
Star Wars: Galaxies
Videogame (2003). Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). Designed by Raph Koster (forename is a short form of Raphael, not Ralph mistyped). Platforms: Win. / While the milieu of Star Wars: Galaxies was licenced from the eponymous film series (specifically, it was set in a frozen historical moment between Star Wars (1977) [1977] and ...
Ewers, Hanns Heinz
(1871-1943) German author, spy in Mexico and the USA in World War One, and early member of the Nazi Party, though he soon alienated its leaders through his insistence that his and their obsession with matters of Blood led inevitably (and properly) to psychic and literal vampirism (see Decadence; Vampires). Supermen predominate in his fiction, ...
Fascinating Tales
Zimbabwean Fanzine, edited from Harare by Howard Dean, roughly quarterly, published between 1994 and 1997 with ten issues produced in total. The focus of Fascinating Tales was genre fiction, including sf, Fantasy, supernatural and Horror tales, written by local authors. Of 55 stories published, 48 were by Zimbabwean writers. It also occasionally published reviews and ...
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 ...