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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.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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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 ...
Mosley, Walter
(1952- ) US author, best known for his crime fiction, in particular the Easy Rawlins sequence beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress (1990). He is of sf interest for several books. Blue Light (1998), an Equipoisal tale, traces the consequences of the eponymous radiance from space, which strikes the earth in discrete "needles" in 1965 and transforms (see Shapeshifters) ...
Throssell, Ric
Working name of Australian diplomat, actor, playwright and author Richard Prichard Throssell (1922-1999), who during much of his career suffered from Cold War suspicions and Paranoia, a McCarthy-like persecution caused almost entirely by his remaining in contact with his leftwing family; his mother, the author Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969), was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia. Of sf interest is a ...
Schwarz, Mauricio-José
(1955- ) Mexican author and photographer who for seven years had an sf column in the country's daily newspaper Excelsior; he has lived in Spain since 1999. He is the author of about 50 short stories, many sf or horror. Schwarz was the first winner, in 1984, of the Puebla Award for Best SF Short Story in Mexico with his tale "La pequena guerra" ["The Smallest War"]. Some of his stories are collected in ...
Corelli, Marie
Pseudonym of UK author Mary Mackay (1855-1924); her name was long in doubt, as she was secretive about her birth, which was illegitimate. She wrote extremely popular bestsellers (selling, in her prime, 100,000-copy editions), although her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds (1886 2vols; rev 1887) – in which interstellar travel is accomplished at about the turn of the century, through "personal electricity" – and its sequel, ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...