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Tuesday 13 October 2026
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 12 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Poe, Stephen Edward
(1936-2000) US advertising man and author, author of the nonfiction work The Making of Star Trek (1968) as by Stephen E Whitfield (the surname being his stepfather's) and Gene Roddenberry, producer of the original Star Trek series which is the book's subject. The idea for the book was Poe's, as indeed was the actual writing; but Roddenberry gave considerable help and support and is credited along with Whitfield ...
Cloud Atlas
Film (2012). Cloud Atlas Productions/X-Filme Creative Pool/Anarchos Pictures. Directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy (now Lilly) Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Written by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, and Lana Wachowski, based on the novel Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell. Cast includes Doona Bae, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, James D'Arcy, Keith David, Hugh Grant, David Gyasi, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Jim ...
Wheeler, Thomas Gerald
(? - ) US physician and author whose Young Adult sf novel Lost Threshold (1968) is a very late Lost-World story, in which a secret Underground passage leads the hero through a portal or gateway to another world of uncertain location whose pre-industrial people have access to unlimited supplies of gold which they regard as almost worthless but ...
Strange Plasma
US Semiprozine, letter-size, published by Edgewood Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and edited by Steve Pasechnick. Intended to be quarterly the magazine ran for eight occasional issues, once or twice a year between Summer 1989 and Winter 1994, Pasechnick openly admitting that producing a Small Press magazine was "far more difficult" than he had imagined. Subtitled "speculative + imaginative fiction", ...
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 ...