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Sunday 13 July 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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Silbersack, John
(1954- ) US editor, agent and author, active as an editor with Putnam/Berkley books 1977-1981, with New American Library 1986-1992, with Warner Books in 1992, and with Harper Collins 1993-1999; he joined Trident Media Group in 2001 as a senior agent. Throughout his career he has been noted for a swift and canny knowledgeability about the sf world. With Victoria Schochet he edited the first four ...
Shefner, Vadim
(1915-2002) Russian author known mostly for his poetry (from circa 1940) and mainstream fiction. Two short novels, "Čelovek s pjatio 'Ne'" (1967 Zvezda nr 4; trans Alice Stone Nakhimovsky and Alexander Nakhimovsky as "The Unman") and Devushka u obryva ili Zapiski Kovrigina ["Kovrigin's Chronicles"] (1964 Literature Rossija nrs 39-44, 46; 1970; trans Antonina W Bouis as "Kovrigin's Chronicles"), were published together as ...
Walton, Bryce
(1918-1988) US author, prolific under his own name and others in several genres, his Television work including scripts for Captain Video. He wrote some sf as Paul Franklin, Kenneth O'Hara and Dave Sands, though his first story, "The Ultimate World" in Planet Stories for Winter 1945, was as Walton. He contributed actively to the magazines until about 1960, less frequently thereafter. ...
Purple Claw, The
US Comic (1953). Minoan Publishing Corp. 3 issues. Artists include Ben Brown and David Gantz. Script writers include Charles Kuhn. 36 pages per issue, with three long strips (all featuring Dr Weir with the Purple Claw), a short text story and 1-2 short strips (some non-fiction). / Dr Jonathan Weir is severely injured when his plane crashes in an African jungle, but is cured by a local witch doctor using the purple claw, which is worn like a gauntlet; his ...
Flint, James
(1968- ) UK editor and author whose first novel, Habitus (1998) Equipoisally hovers amongst various readings of reality, though its human protagonists' gradual (and increasingly gnostic) intoxication with a world defined by the conduits of information that control is less and less amenable to a mimetic reading, certainly as the main mediating consciousness of the book is a dog in orbit. 52 Ways to Magic America ...
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 ...