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Thursday 30 March 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 29 March 2023
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Brown, Eric
(1960-2023) UK author who began publishing sf – after a children's play, Noel's Ark (1982 chap) – with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation" for Interzone in Autumn 1987; like several further tales assembled in The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with information. This marriage of Cordwainer ...
Engh, M J
(1933- ) US librarian and author whose first sf novel, Arslan (1976; vt A Wind from Bukhara 1989), established a strong underground reputation in its first incarnation as a paperback original; a hardbound edition was released a decade later. Arslan, a young warlord from Near-Future Turkestan, has enigmatically conquered both the USA and the USSR. He personally occupies the small Illinois town of Kraftsville, ...
Frankish, H
(? -? ) UK author, long thought to be pseudonymous but in fact not so. His one published book is Dr Cunliffe, Investigator (coll of linked stories 1913), featuring the exploits of the eponymous Scientist/investigator/Superhero whose assignments from Scotland Yard involve him with at least one Alien, a Vampire, a transplanted ...
Macrostructures
An unfailingly popular theme in sf is the discovery, usually by humans, of vast enigmatic constructions – macrostructures or Big Dumb Objects – in space or on other planets. As a rule these have been built by a mysterious, now-disappeared race of Alien intellectual giants (see Forerunners) and humans can only guess at their purpose, though the very fact of being confronted by such ...
Ascendance of a Bookworm
Japanese animated tv series (2019-current). Original title vt Honzuki no Gekokujō. Based on the Light Novel by Miya Kazuki. Ajia-do Animation Works. Directed by Mitsuru Hongo. Written by Mariko Kunisawa. Voice cast includes Show Hayami, Yuka Iguchi and Aya Uchida. 36 24-minute episodes (and two OVAs). Colour. / A Head Priest (Hyami) uses matching circlets to view a puzzling young child's past. We next see that ...
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...