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Saturday 12 September 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.
Site updated on 7 September 2026
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Oldest Profession, The
French/German anthology film (1967; original title Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde). Rialto Films, Films Gibs. First segment "L'Ère préhistorique" directed by Franco Indovina, written by Ennio Flaiano. Final segment "Anticipation" written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Cast includes Jacques Charrier, Anna Karina, Michèle Mercier, Enrico Mario Salerno, Gabriele Tinti and Marilù Tolo. 119 ...
Eco, Umberto
(1932-2016) Italian academic and author active from the mid-1950s, famed for his work in history, philosophy, literary criticism and semiotics. His adult novels are not explicitly sf, the closest he came to the genre being in two children's books, La bomba e il generale (1966 chap; trans William Weaver as The Bomb and the General 1989 chap) and I tre cosmonauti (1966 chap; trans William ...
van Dresser, Peter
(1909-1983) US ecology pioneer and Rocket experimenter who also wrote sf, with eight stories published in the 1930s, though his contribution is now almost forgotten since only one was in a Genre SF magazine. He was editor of Astronautics, Journal of the American Rocket Society, a member of their Experiment Committee, and one of a number of authors who pledged a portion of their story earnings to the Experiment Fund. He performed ...
DiMarco, Jennifer
(1973- ) US publisher and author, usually on Gender issues, who is best known for the Patriarchy sequence, beginning with Escape to the Wind (1993), set in a Post-Holocaust Seattle run by an anti-female junta. Other work includes at least two novels, Immortality (1999) and Dragon Storm (2000). Her publishing firm, Pride & Imprints, claims to release books ...
Hersey, John
(1914-1993) US author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, born to missionary parents in China where he lived until he was ten; he is perhaps best known for his early book-length essay on the first use of the atomic bomb in warfare, Hiroshima (31 August 1946 The New Yorker; 1946), probably the first text to qualify as a "non-fiction novel", and the most illustrious example of the form. The Child Buyer (1960), a Near-Future ...
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 ...