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Tuesday 11 November 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 10 November 2025
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Wu Ming-Yi
(1971- ) Taiwan academic, artist and author whose Near Future sf novel, Fu Yan Ren (2011; trans Derryl Sterk as The Man with the Compound Eyes 2013), describes with parable-like intensity the intersection of a vast Island of polluted matter (known as the Great Pacific Trash Vortex) with the civilizations which have created it (see ...
Higginson, H W
(? -? ) US author of whom nothing is known beyond The Elixir (1930 chap), a Superman story published by Hugo Gernsback in his Science Fiction Series. The eponymous Drug massively increases intelligence in those to whom it is fed; but deadly conflicts ensue. [JC]
Pynchon, Thomas
(1937- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" in Epoch Magazine for Spring 1959; all of his works are Fabulations in that most of them resemble sf under some interpretations (see also Fantastika), and Against the Day (2006) is undoubtedly sf. Though the Paranoia-wracked worlds his protagonists inhabit may ...
Souvestre, Émile
(1806-1854) French teacher, journalist and author whose seeming Utopia, Le Monde Tel Qu'il Sera (1846; trans Margaret Clarke as The World as It Shall Be 2004), gives a complexly Satirical portrait of the world its protagonists have attained via a lengthy period of death-like Suspended Animation, making their Sleeper-Awakes revival in ...
Berna, Paul
Pseudonym of French author Jean-Marie-Edmond Sabran (1908-1994), prolific in various genres, who also wrote as Joël Audrenn, Bernard Deleuze and Paul Gerrard; of his many books for children as by Paul Berna, the most famous is the non-fantastic Le cheval sans tête (1955; trans John Buchanan-Brown as A Hundred Million Francs 1957). Of his several tales of sf interest, the Threshold of the Stars sequence – comprising ...
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 ...