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Sunday 12 April 2026
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 6 April 2026
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Girard, Dian
(1942-2017) US author and artist long active in Los Angeles Fandom, publishing the spoofish Board Game The Game of Fandom in June 1964 as by Dian Pelz – her then married name, also used for some artwork appearing in the late 1960s. She began to publish fiction of genre interest with "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry" in 2020 Vision (anth 1974) edited by Jerry Pournelle. Further ...
Strick, Philip
(1939-2006) UK sf and film critic, anthologist, teacher, and director of a film library. In 1969 he initiated one of the first adult evening classes in sf in the UK, sponsored by the University of London at the City Literary Institute (see SF in the Classroom), which continued until 1992 under various tutors including John Clute, Colin Greenland, Peter ...
Dawson, Les
(1931-1993) UK stand-up and television comedian, whose self-mocking, pantomime-based, "working-class" humour made a strong impact on a very wide audience; of his several novels, A Time Before Genesis: A Novel of the Future's Past (1986), a seriously overwritten Near Future tale dousing its sf elements in Horror tropes as the protagonists discover the true masters of the universe. [JC]
La Folie, Louis-Guillaume De
(1739-1780) French polymath, industrial chemist and author, member of l'Académie de Rouen, whose surname also appears as de la Follie. His Proto SF tale, Le Philosophe sans Prétention ou L'Homme Rare: Ouvrage Physique, Chymique, Politique et Moral, Dédié aux Savants ["The Unpretentious Philosopher or the Rare Man: A Physical, Chemical, Political and Moral Work, Dedicated to Scholars"] (1775) as M[onsieur] D L F, features ...
Wagar, W Warren
(1932-2004) US academic (professor of history since 1971 at the State University of New York at Binghamton, which has since 1991 been Binghamton University) and author. He has published sf – his first story being "Heart's Desire" in Asimov's for July 1984 – but his involvement in the field comes primarily through his many years of work on H G Wells in books like H.G. Wells and the World State (1961), ...
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 ...