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Monday 13 January 2025
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 13 January 2025
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Shinjō Kazuma
(? - ) Japanese author whose early success came in 1991 with a Tie to a Play-by-Mail game: Hōrai Gakuen ["Penglai Academy"] set at a huge, 100,000-strong school of duellists and schemers, itself on an offshore island that takes its name from that of the "isles of the immortals" in Chinese legend. His subsequent work has largely ...
Jeter, K W
(1950- ) US author of importance as an author of horror novels, the highly charged claustrophobia of his style fitting the essential affect of that genre rather better than it does sf. His early work, generally conceived in sf terms, gives off an air of hectic congestion which sometimes interferes with the presentation of ideas, with the cognitively unencumbered articulation of some barrier through which the story (and its protagonists) penetrate; for him, as for most ...
Ross, Malcolm
(1895-1965) US author and reporter, the protagonist of whose Time in Reverse sf novel, The Man Who Lived Backward (1950), lives from 1940 to 1865, dying just after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which he is therefore unable to prevent. [JC]
Hershman, Morris
(1926- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Happy Traitor" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for June 1953; a handful of further SF Magazine stories followed.. His sf novel, Shareworld (1972; vt The Crash of 2086 1976), takes a Dystopian view of the stock market dominating the entire world and anticipates a ...
Cole, Charles
(? -? ) US author of Visitors from Mars: A Narrative (1901), whose protagonist, frustrated after the failure of his Invention, a heavier-than-air plane, to win earthly success, is approached by a small man from Mars, who persuades him to visit. On arrival, the protagonist is made welcome to the Martian Utopia, whose inhabitants are vegetarian, atheist, extremely ...
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 ...