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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 ...
Berg, Sibylle
(1962- ) German journalist, playwright and author, in Switzerland from 1996, active from the early 1990s; their first novel, Ein paar Leute suchen das Glück und lachen sich tot erschien ["A Few People Search for Happiness and Laugh Themselves to Death"] (1997) is a sharp gonzo Satire directed to contemporary German and worldwide culture, with a sustaining focus on the music industry. Several of her subsequent novels convey ...
Cohen, Barney
Working name of US author Bernard Halsband Cohen (1944- ), whose first novel of genre interest was The Night of the Toy Dragons (1977). The Taking of Satcon Station (1982) with Jim Baen, the first of two Asher Bockhorn sf thrillers, is an engagingly over-the-top application of private-eye idioms and plots (Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon [1930] being much in evidence) to near space, the ...
Pogue, Bill
(1930-2014) US Skylab astronaut and author, whose The Trikon Deception (1992) with Ben Bova, a Near Future tale set on a vast orbiting satellite where scientists employed by various private corporations are ostensibly united in an attempt to work out a technological fix to save the planet, which is decaying rapidly through Ecological degradation; but conflicts soon ensue. [JC]
Fuller, Ira C
(1828-1913) US businessman, photographer, psychic and author, several of whose works are nonfiction speculations in the occult. Poems and Essays [for full title see Checklist] (coll 1897) anonymous presents poems purportedly by famous authors (many dead) who conveyed them to the editor. Of sf interest is The Mysteries of the Formation of the Earth, the Rising and Sinking of Continents, the Introduction of Man and his Destiny Revealed, in God's Own Way and Time (1899) ...
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 ...