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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 ...
Prisons
Scenarios of future Crime and Punishment frequently include prison facilities, ranging from mild extrapolation of present-day institutions to highly exotic variants from which escape is theoretically impossible but nevertheless often takes place. Influential nonfantastic precursors of sf prisons, featuring just such more or less remarkable breakouts, include the real-world, Island-based Château d'If of Alexandre ...
Butner, Richard
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Saving the World" (1989 Scream) and whose speculative short fiction has since appeared in such venues as Electric Velocipede, F&SF, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Say ... and Sci Fiction. ...
Sagas, L M
(? - ) US author of the slightly spoofish Ambit's Run Space Opera sequence beginning with Cascade Failure (2024). The interstellar Space Opera setting, in which a for-profit corporation vies with a vast union, both under the aegis of a monitoring Guild, provides opportunities for action in space and on planets. An AI-governed ...
Jensen, Reidar
(1942- ) Norwegian journalist and author, regarded as an important voice of New Wave sf in the 1970s. Jensen's first published story, "Den siste natten i hele verden" ["The Last Night in All the World"] (1969), received the Norwegian first prize in a sf contest arranged by three Scandinavian newspapers: Dagbladet (Norway), Politiken (Denmark) and Dagens Nyheter (Sweden). "Forsidepiker smiler aldri to ganger" ["Cover Girls ...
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 ...