SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 11 July 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 7 July 2026
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Lapierre, Dominique
(1931-2022) French author who collaborated with Larry Collins on several thrillers including the Near Future The Fifth Horseman (1980), in which Colonel Quaddafi of Libya blackmails New York with the threat of a nuclear bomb hidden in that City. [DRL]
Kepler, Johannes
(1571-1630) German astronomer, one-time assistant to Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and later imperial mathematician and astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. Kepler's contribution to Astronomy – most notably his three laws of planetary motion – provided vital groundwork for Newton's cosmological synthesis. In 1593 he prepared a dissertation on the heliocentric theory, which explained how events in the heavens would be ...
Brazil [film]
Film (1985). Brazil/Twentieth Century Fox/Universal. Directed Terry Gilliam. Written by Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown. Cast includes Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Jonathan Pryce, Ian Richardson and Peter Vaughan. European release 142 minutes; American release 132 minutes; "Sheinberg Edit" 94 minutes. Colour. / The US print of Brazil was initially ...
Waldrop, Howard
(1946-2024) US author, an important member of the Texas-based school of sf writers, much of whose early work was set in the American South. He began to publish work of genre interest with "Lunchbox" in Analog for May 1972, reportedly John W Campbell Jr's last (and perhaps least typical) discovery before he died with the tale still in manuscript. This was assembled with other early stories, some previously unpublished, as ...
Shurkin, Joel N
(1938- ) US journalist (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979) and author whose very Near Future medical Technothriller, Helix (1979) with Desmond Ryan, extrapolates from the real effects of Legionnaire's Disease to depict a virulent nationwide Pandemic. [JC]
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 ...