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Monday 17 February 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 17 February 2025
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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Mythology
The relationship of mythology to sf is close and deep, but not always obvious. Part of the confusion stems from the widely held belief that sf is itself a form of latter-day mythology, fulfilling comparable hungers in us. James Blish took issue with this argument, pointing out that myth is usually "static and final in intent and thus entirely contrary to the spirit of sf, which assumes continuous change". We restrict ourselves below to the role of ...
Wimpfen, Sheldon
(1913-2003) US mining engineer and author whose sf novel, The Pringle Progression: Smaller/Fewer: a Novel (1998), describes a Near Future world devastated by Overpopulation as a young couple, a doctor and an engineer, attempt to discover a solution for the inability of Homo sapiens to stop breeding. The earlier Tin Peaks & Silver Streams (1995) is a memoir. [JC]
Mannes, Marya
(1904-1990) US author, features editor and journalist, often on Feminist themes. Her first novel, Message from a Stranger (1948), is an afterlife fantasy. In her sf Satire They (1968), the USA is taken over by the under-30s, who determine that everyone must retire by the age of 50, live in segregated Keeps, and undergo euthanasia by the age of 65. [JC/PN]
Fairburn, Edwin
(1827-1911) New Zealand land surveyor, painter and author whose sf novel, The Ships of Tarshish: Being a Sequel to the "Wandering Jew" (1867 [but see Checklist]) as by Mohoao, which may be the first published novel by a native of New Zealand, is a kind of Future War tale in which an English descendant of the Wandering Jew saves beleaguered Britain with his futuristic ironclads (see ...
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 ...