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Monday 16 March 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.
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De Pizan, Christine
(1364-circa 1430) Italian-born poet and author, in France from early childhood. Her name has been variously spelled: her surname has also been given as de Pisan; she was born Cristina da Pizzano. A Feminist decoding of her life justifies the claim that she is the first European woman to support herself as a professional author (Aphra Behn may be the second). She cannot be profitably added to the roster of ...
Gibbons, Gavin
(1922-1978) UK publisher and author of both nonfiction and fiction; of the latter, By Space Ship to the Moon: A Tale of Adventure in Outer Space for Boys (1958), a Young Adult tale whose modestly familiar contents are hinted at in the full title. Other titles with a sound of sf – like The Coming of the Space Ships (1956) or They Rode in Space Ships (1957) – are in fact UFO books, and ...
King Kong
1. Film (1933). RKO. Directed by Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack. Written by James A Creelman, Ruth Rose, from a story by Cooper, with credit also given to Edgar Wallace. Special effects designed and supervised by Willis H O'Brien. Cast includes Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray. 100 minutes. Black and white. / The classic ...
Page, Spider
Pseudonym of US author Donald Graham Cormack (1909-2002), active in the Pulp magazines beginning with his first recorded sale "Revolt of the Circus Freaks" (October/November 1938 Horror Stories); his Blue Steel #1: The Ultimate Answer to Evil (1979) had originally been written as "Slaughter, Inc" in 1943 to continue the Spider sequence (see Norvell W Page) in Spider, but was not printed then due to ...
Nelson, Camilla
(1967- ) Australian author of Perverse Acts (1998), a Near Future story set in a Dystopian Australia beset by violent conflict between the right and the centre (see Politics). [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 ...