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Sunday 1 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.
Site updated on 25 September 2023
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Ramsden, Lewis
Pseudonym of A L Dowling (? -? ), UK author of The Temple of Fire (1905), a Lost Race tale whose contemporary protagonists are directed to a mysterious Island in the South Atlantic by a "Strange Letter Found in a Copper Vessel" from Elizabethan times, and find there a civilization descended from ancient Persia; an even more ancient civilization, having suffered racial ...
Sword and Sorcery
This term – describing a subgenre of Fantasy embracing adventures with swordplay and Magic – is usually attributed to Fritz Leiber, who is said to have coined it in 1960 in response to Michael Moorcock's request for such a capsule description; but the kind of story it refers to is much older than that. (Other terms that overlap with "sword-and-sorcery" are ...
Callinan, David
(? - ) UK author whose Fortress Manhattan (1995) hectically depicts a Near Future Manhattan (see New York) as an enclave whose internal environment is redolent of Cyberpunk, while beyond the walls Mutants and others clamour for entrance. [JC]
Pakenham, Ivo
(1903-1980) UK interior decorator, antiques dealer and author whose one novel, Fanfaronade (1934), is a tale involving Timeslip from 1928 to France in 1474. The protagonist, who has lost his Memory (see Amnesia), spends some adventurous years in this world, until recovering his memory he awakens again in the contemporary world. [JC]
Podwil, Jerome
(1938- ) American artist, sometimes credited simply as Podwil, who typically signs his works Jerry Podwil. After graduating from the Pratt School of Art and Design in 1960, Podwil began painting covers for non-genre books, mostly Westerns, and in 1965 shifted to sf art with several assignments from Ace Books. His early covers generally juxtaposed realistic figures with misty or symbolic backgrounds to evoke a ...
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. ...