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Sunday 7 December 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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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Doc Weir Award
Award for services to Fandom, voted on and presented annually at the UK Eastercon since 1963 in memory of the then recently deceased fan Arthur Rose "Doc" Weir (1906-1961) and his activities. The award takes the form of a silver cup engraved with the names of past winners; all available space on the cup itself having been used, winners are now commemorated on silver plates attached to its storage box. The cup ...
Anson, Captain
(1846-1905) UK author, in the Royal Navy 1859-1896. His Future War tale, The Great Anglo-American War of 1900 (1896 chap), warrants modest interest for the worldwide scope of the conflict and for the UK's destruction of San Francisco, which inspires an inventive American response (see Edisonade; Inventions) and successful Invasion of Canada. For ...
Pelot, Mayi
(1947-2016) Basque author, the first and perhaps the most prominent sf author to write in Basque. Biharko oroitzapenak (coll of linked stories 1985; trans Arrete Hidalgo as Memories of Tomorrow 2022) and Teleamarauna ["Television"] (1987) are set in various epochs of a shared Future History whose first significant moment – a nuclear disaster that came close to crippling Basque Country in 1992, some time before ...
Chubbchubbs, The
US short animated film (2002). Sony Pictures Imageworks. Directed by Eric Armstrong. Written by Jeff Wolverton. Voice cast includes Brad Simonsen and Jeff Wolverton. 6 Minutes. Colour. / Fired and kicked out of the Alien karaoke bar where he worked as the janitor, Meeper (Simonsen) is warned by another alien that "the Chubbchubbs are coming" – and, indeed, Monsters can be seen approaching. The bar clientele flee; Meeper ...
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 ...