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Thursday 16 January 2025
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.
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Matheson, Richard
(1926-2013) US screenwriter and author, initially thought of as primarily an sf writer, having begun to publish work of genre interest with "Born of Man and Woman" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950; he was a creator of terror and fantasy in both fiction and film; his Westerns, however, are mostly nonfantastic. His sometimes daring transgressions of conventional genre boundaries marked him from the first as a ...
Curtis Warren
Founded in 1948, one of several UK publishing firms which flourished in the decade after World War Two by releasing dozens of purpose-written paperback originals in various popular genres. Before it foundered in 1954, Curtis Warren had published over 500 novels, 98 of them sf, all of them composed strictly according to length restrictions: in 1948-1950, Curtis Warren books were of 24 or 32 pages; in 1950-1953, they were of 112 or 128 pages; from 1953, 160-page volumes were the rule. Curtis ...
Simon, Francesca
(1955- ) US-born author, in UK from early adulthood; she initially concentrated on books for younger children, like the Horrid Henry sequence beginning with Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine (2012), but is of more direct interest for the sharply Equipoisal Norse Gods sequence comprising Sleeping Army (2011) and The Lost Gods (2014), set in an ...
Mercenary
Videogame (1985). Novagen Software (NS). Designed by Paul Woakes. Platforms: Atari8, C64 (1985); Amstrad, Spectrum (1987); Amiga, AtariST (1988). / While it is of primarily historical interest today, Mercenary is notable as an early example of a modular plot structure (see Interactive Narrative) in which the player has considerable freedom of action within clearly defined boundaries, ...
Beyond the Boundaries
UK A4-size quarterly Semiprozine, first issue titled Mab Sêr ["Son of the Stars"]. Published with the support of the Arts Council of Wales; described itself as "A collection of stories, articles, poems and cartoons of science fact and fiction, fantasy and horror"; its bookshop circulation was mainly in the Cardiff area. Twelve issues Autumn 1994 to Summer 1997, first four issues also numbered "Volume 1". Published by the Welsh Speculative Writers' ...
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 ...