SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 25 May 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 19 May 2025
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Widescreen Baroque
An occasionally quoted critical term coined by Brian Aldiss to denote Space Opera at its most grandiose: what might also be termed space grand opera. In his introduction to the 1964 Faber edition (as The Paradox Men) of Charles L Harness's Flight into Yesterday (May 1949 Startling; exp 1953; vt The Paradox Men ...
Gombrowicz, Witold
(1904-1969) Polish playwright, essayist and author whose work was not directly connected with Genre SF, though he occasionally utilized fantastic elements; his impact on Polish literature (see Poland) was unprecedented both at the level of his highly original narrative technique, for which he derived idiosyncratic diminutive forms and neologisms, and a consistent philosophy, at some points evoking associations with existentialism, ...
Forward, Robert L
(1932-2002) US physicist and author, senior scientist at Hughes Research Laboratories and one of the most devoted Hard-SF authors of the 1980s; married to Martha Dodson Forward, father of Julie Forward Fuller (with whom he has collaborated on sf) and supernatural fiction author Robert Dodson Forward (1958- ). He began publishing sf with "The Singing Diamond" (February 1979 ...
Laws
Certain "laws", principles or guidelines relevant to sf have become known by their authors' names, and the following examples have separate entries in this encyclopedia: Isaac Asimov's well-known Laws of Robotics, Clarke's Laws of Futures Studies as formulated by Arthur C Clarke, and ...
Burgess, Scott Alan
(1964- ) US fan and critic who has contributed two Bibliographies to the Borgo Press Bibliographies of Modern Authors series: of Reginald Bretnor in The Work of Reginald Bretnor: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1989) and of Dean Ing in The Work of Dean Ing: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide (1990 ...
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 ...