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Sunday 8 February 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 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Stolen Airship, The
Czechoslovakian live-action and animated film (1967; original title Ukradená vzducholod). Filmové Studio Barrandov, Filmové Studio Gottwaldov. Directed by Karel Zeman. Written by Radovan Krátky and Karel Zeman, based on the Jules Verne novels The Mysterious Island (1874-1875 2vols) and Two Years' Vacation (1889). Cast includes Hanus Bor, Jan Cizek, Jan Malát, Michal Pospisil, Cestmir ...
Rohan, Michael Scott
(1951-2018) Scottish publisher, editor and author with a degree in law, with Elsevier International Publishing 1973-1978 and since freelance. Following a fiction debut with "The Planetoid in the Case: A Matter of Unnatural Law" in the Oxford University SF Group's Amateur Magazine SFinx #7 for January 1973, he began publishing sf professionally with "Fidei Defensor" in Andromeda 2 (anth 1977) edited by Peter ...
Varlet, Théo
(1878-1938) French poet, translator and author, active from before 1900, though only after World War One as a novelist. Tales of sf interest include Les Titans du ciel (1921) and L'agonie de la Terre (1922) both with Octave Joncquel and comprising together one novel, L'épopée martienne: L'agonie de la Terre: Roman planétaire ("omni" 1922; trans Brian Stableford as The Martian Epic ...
Mårtensson, Bertil
(1945-2018) Swedish philosopher and author. Mårtensson began reading sf in the mid-1950s, became active in Swedish sf Fandom in 1962 and published his first professional story: "Urhemmet" ["Original Home"] in the sf magazine Häpna! for December 1963. An extremely active fan, he edited numerous Fanzines during the 1960s and again in the 1990s, contributed stories, poetry, ...
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 ...