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Thursday 5 October 2023
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.
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Stone, Rodney
(1932- ) UK author, mostly of nonfantastic thrillers under his own name and as by Matthew Hunter. Of sf interest is The Cambridgeshire Disaster (1967) as by Hunter, featuring the Near Future destruction of that academic enclave; Cries in the Night (1991), in which the contemporary abduction of two children uncannily evokes events from World War Two, does not in fact trespass ...
Walters, Eric
(1957- ) Canadian teacher and author, most of his seventy or so Young Adult tales being nonfantastic, though he has begun in the twenty-first century to publish sf. The End of Days sequence, comprising End of Days (2011) Regenesis (2015), centres on a UFO-like scenario, the abduction by Aliens of the world's best Scientists, ...
Mad Scientist
Although the Cliché of Mad Scientist as Villain is most familiar from sf in Pulp magazines and Comics, the notion that powerful minds are likely to become dangerously overheated is far older than sf. According to the Roman philosopher and playwright Seneca the Younger (circa 4 BCE-65 CE), "nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit" ...
Modest Heroes
Japanese animated film (2018). Original title Chīsana Eiyū: Kani to Tamago to Tōmei Ningen. Studio Ponoc. Directors and writers are named below. Voice cast includes Joe Odagiri, Machiko Ono, Sōta Shinohara and Min Tanaka. 53 minutes. Black and white. / Studio Ponoc was founded by Yoshiaki Nishimura, formerly a producer with Studio Ghibli (see Hayao Miyazaki), as were many of the new company's ...
Jepson, Selwyn
(1899-1989) UK screenwriter and author, son of Edgar Jepson; most of his novels are mysteries, though The Death Gong: A Chivalrous Outburst (1927), in which vibrations from the eponymous gong kill scientists, is marginal sf. [JC]
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. ...