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Wednesday 23 April 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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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Varoufakis, Yanis
(1961- ) Greek economist, politician and professor, holder of an Australian passport from 2000, formerly the Greek Minister of Finance and co-author of the polemic A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Euro Crisis (2010) – see Jonathan Swift. As an academic, he acquired postgraduate degrees in mathematical statistics and economics at British universities, and taught in Australia, Greece, the UK and the USA before ...
Shea, Cornelius
(1863-1920) US author for the silent screen and author of dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF), prolific in many categories but best remembered for marvel stories using a fairly consistent "mythology" of dwarfs, subterranean eruptions, and stage illusion masquerading as supernatural magic. His first tale of sf interest seems to be The Air Voyagers; Or, a Trip to the Moon in a Balloon: A Tale of Wonderful Adventure (1880 chap), which may have been ...
Auden, W H
Working name of Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973), UK poet, playwright, librettist and critic, a US citizen from 1946; he was Oxford Professor of Poetry 1956-1961. His verse combined wide-ranging technical brilliance with an early fascination for modern Technology, especially that associated with mining and Transportation: aviation is sinisterly glamourized in "Journal of an Airman" (in The Orators, coll 1932) (see ...
Johns, Stratford
(1925-2002) South African actor, in the UK from 1948; best known for his long stint as Barlow in the BBC television police procedural series Z Cars, and its sequels and spin-offs, between 1962 and 1976. His sf novel for Young Adult readers, Gumphlumph (1966), about an Alien visitor to Earth, is of modest interest. [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 ...