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Saturday 12 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
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Freelancer
Videogame (2003). Digital Anvil (DA). Designed by Chris Roberts. Platforms: Win. / Freelancer is a three-dimensional Space Sim which combines the open exploratory gameplay of Elite (1984) with an integrated linear plot (see Interactive Narrative). The player character is Edison Trent, a down on his luck "freelancer" who needs a new ship. Soon ...
Cli-Fi
Item of Terminology coined by obvious analogy to Sci Fi and denoting speculative fiction about Climate Change (which see for this encyclopedia's main discussion of the topic). As with the "critical" term High Concept in its 2020s sense, "Cli-Fi" was coined and became fashionable almost entirely outside the world of sf and sf criticism (see ...
Erisman, Fred
(1937- ) US academic and author of nonfiction work on American popular fiction, concentrating on the Western and on children's literature, though he has written on sf topics in Extrapolation and elsewhere. He is of sf interest primarily for two studies. Boys' Books, Boys' Dreams, and the Mystique of Flight (2006) (see Airplane Boys; Airship Boys) ...
Champions
Role Playing Game (1981). Hero Games (HG). Designed by George MacDonald, Steve Peterson. / The first edition of Champions popularized the use of a point-based method for character creation, an idea previously seen in Superhero 2044 (1977) and The Fantasy Trip (1977-1980 Metagaming Concepts) designed by Steve Jackson. All characters begin the game ...
Ramo, Simon
(1913-2016) US engineer and author whose nonfiction includes Peacetime Uses of Outer Space (1961) and What's Wrong with Our Technological Society and How to Fix It (1983), in which he advocates nuclear disarmament and a society capable of controlling its own excesses. A similar philosophy is given Near Future fictional form in ...
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 ...