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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.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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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 ...
Heron-Maxwell, Beatrice
(1859-1927) UK author, an extremely prolific writer of stories, whose What May Happen: Stories Natural and Supernatural (coll 1901) contains some tales with speculative content, and whose The Queen Regent (1902) describes a Ruritania on an Island. [JC]
Levett, Arthur
(? -? ) UK author of A Martian Examines Christianity (1934), a disquisition in the form of a novel: a visitor from Mars lands on Earth in his Spaceship and discusses Religion until the book ends. [JC]
Bova, Ben
(1932-2020) US author and editor who worked as technical editor for Project Vanguard 1956-1958, and science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory 1960-1971, before being appointed editor of Analog following the death of John W Campbell Jr in 1971. The magazine had become creatively moribund – although it remained commercially healthy – during the last decade of so of Campbell's editorship. Bova maintained the ...
Conrad, Joseph
(1857-1924) Polish-born author, in the UK mercantile marine from 1878 to 1894, a UK citizen from 1886, changing his name at that point from Józef Teodor Konrad Naleçz Korzeniowski to Joseph Conrad. For much of his life he laboured under the misprision of his early reputation as a teller of "mere" sea tales; but in later life he gained commercial success, and increasingly after World War Two he received wide attention for the more complex works of his maturity, like Nostromo ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...