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Tuesday 24 June 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 23 June 2025
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Gould, Steven
(1955- ) US author, married to Laura J Mixon, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Touch of Their Eyes" in Analog for September 1980, though he only began to attract wide notice with his first novel – the first volume in the Jumper sequence comprising Jumper (1992), Reflex (2004) and Jumper: Griffin's Story (2007), a ...
Nebula Anthologies
Anthologies of Nebula-winning short fiction, along with a selection of the runners-up, have been published roughly annually since the award's inception, each volume edited by a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (known until 1992 as Science Fiction Writers of America). The series, initially Nebula Award Stories, has occasionally been titled Nebula Award Winners and other ...
Mutants
The idea of "mutation" as a concept for use in understanding biological Evolution was popularized by Hugo de Vries (1848-1935) in Die Mutationstheorie (1901-1903); he related it to gross hereditary variations – the freakish "sports" which occasionally turn up in animal populations. Such sports are usually short-lived and sterile, and Charles Darwin (1809-1882) had rejected the notion that they might play a key part; the concept of mutation as an ...
Aldridge, Ray
Working name of US author Raymon Huebert Aldridge (1948- ), who began publishing work of sf interest with "The Flesh Tinker and the Loneliest Man" in Amazing for July 1987. His most typical work – in a style evocative of Cordwainer Smith and Jack Vance – may be contained in the PanGalactic Universe sequence, beginning with "The Touch of the Hook" (April 1988 ...
Gask, Arthur
(1869-1951) UK-born dental surgeon and author who began his latter career in the early 1921, after his 1920 move to Australia. Among his many detective thrillers are two tales of some sf interest, The Red Paste Murders (1924; vt Murder in the Night 1932), the eponymous chemical being of borderline-sf composition, and The Fall of a Dictator (1939), which ventures into the Near Future. [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, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...