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Tuesday 29 April 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 28 April 2025
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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Optimism and Pessimism
In the most simplistic version of the History of SF, sf was always (and rightly) an optimistic literature until the New Wave came along in the 1960s and spoiled everything. This was at best a very partial truth, being only usefully, though by no means universally, applicable to Genre SF, but not to the Scientific Romance, nor to the loose array of works by ...
Repton, Humphry
(1752-1818) UK landscape gardener, of great significance as theorist and practitioner, his successful gardens expressing an early Romantic sense of the picturesque, in contrast to the domineering formalism of earlier styles. He is of sf interest for one short story, "From a Private Mad-House" (in Variety: A Collection of Essays: Written in the Year 1787, anth 1788), which was republished as "Voyage to the Moon" (in Odd Whims; And Miscellanies, coll 1804 2vols), in ...
Crimes of the Future
Film (1970). Emergent Films. Produced, directed, written and photographed David Cronenberg. Cast includes Jon Lidolt, Jack Messinger, Ronald Mlodzik and Tania Zolty. 70 minutes. Colour. / This cheaply made, inventive Canadian film, something between an underground and a commercial movie, is chiefly of interest as ushering in – along with Stereo (1969) – Cronenberg's distinguished, eccentric and ...
Weatherhead, John
(? - ) UK author of Transplant (1969), a Near Future Dystopia whose citizens are controlled by the state, and are at risk of mandatory interference with their bodies through a mooted transplant Bill. [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 ...