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Sunday 13 July 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.
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Méliès, Georges
(1861-1938) French theatre and film director and entrepreneur. A natural showman, Méliès began his theatrical career as a conjurer, designing his own trick gadgets, against the wishes of his family, whose wealth came from manufacturing shoes. In 1888, his father's death allowed him to sell his interest in the firm, helping to provide him with the finances to buy the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, and his magic shows there became famous. In 1896, ...
Perrin, Don
(1964- ) Canadian author and game designer born in Germany, a former military officer; married to Margaret Weis from 1996 but later divorced. He has contributed to Weis's Dragonlance sequence and other Fantasy Role Playing Game franchises. Of sf interest is the Knights of the Black Earth/Mag Force 7 Space Opera trilogy opening ...
Gernsback, Hugo
Working and perhaps eventually legal name of Luxembourg-born US inventor, author, editor and publisher Hugo Gernsbacher (1884-1967), who emigrated to America in 1904 to market his various minor inventions. A successful catalogue of radio parts led to a focus on publishing magazines, mostly dealing with practical science or sf, though his most popular magazine may have been the mildly scandalous Sexology. Gernsback made important contributions to the growth and development of modern sf as ...
Fisher, Mary A
(1839-1920) UK-born author in US from childhood; The Ghost in the Garret and Other Stories (coll 2010) assembled supernatural tales. She is of sf interest for her novel Among the Immortals, in the Land of Desire: A Glimpse of the Beyond (1916), which is set in a Utopian Afterlife [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] where relations between the sexes (see ...
Romans, R H
(? -? ) Astronomer and author, probably American, for the 1930s sf Pulp magazines, including "The Moon Conquerors" (Winter 1930 Science Wonder Quarterly), a Space Opera implausibly involving the Moon, though the tale is notable for the suggestion of an electromagnetic drive to launch a Spaceship to the Moon; its companion piece, "The War ...
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 ...