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Saturday 17 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.
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Kirk, Laurence
Pseudonym of Scottish naval officer and author Eric Andrew Simson (1895-1956), who was in active service during World War One and also published under his own name. His fiction as Kirk includes one sf novel, The Gale of the World (1948), set in a Near Future England where a scientific Discovery threatens the stability of the world. [JC]
Fearing, Kenneth
(1902-1961) US poet and author, who supported himself in early years in part by writing softcore pornography as by Kirk Wolff, and whose early renown as a poet faded perceptibly even before his death; he is now known mainly for mysteries like The Big Clock (1946), a tale whose atmosphere adumbrates the film-noir tonality of later US fantasy. Fearing's only sf novel proper is Clark Gifford's Body (1942), which gravely and literately portrays a ...
Burkett, Larry
(1939-2003) US radio host and author, mostly of nonfiction, including several popular texts on how to succeed in business from a Christian perspective. He is of sf interest for the Illuminati sequence beginning with The Illuminati (1991), set in a Near Future America taken over by the eponymous pagan Secret Masters, with only a few Christians (see Religion) prepared to resist. In ...
Rowcroft, Charles
(1798-1856) UK author, in Australia between 1821 and 1825, perhaps best known for his Australian adventure fiction assembled in Tales of the Colonies (coll 1843) and its successors. In his sf novel, The Triumph of Woman: A Christmas Story (1848), an inhabitant of sexless Neptune (see Outer Planets) visits a German, with whose daughter he falls in love amid erudite discussions of Neptunian science. The plot then devolves into a ...
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 ...