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Monday 20 October 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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Slater, Henry J
(1879-1963) UK author whose work showed the influence of H G Wells in both Ship of Destiny (1951), where Post-Holocaust survivors sail across a drowned Europe, and The Smashed World (1952), set 3000 years hence in a World State which is destroyed by a reborn Napoleon. Some of Slater's effects oddly prefigure the afterlife fantasies of Philip José Farmer. ...
Wolf, Christa
(1929-2011) German author, most of whose creative life was spent in East Germany, where her career was difficult but ultimately – though perhaps not until her last decade – recognized in moat-defensive reunited Germany as triumphant. "Selbstversuch" ["Self-Experiment"] (February 1973 Sinn und Form), filmed for Television as Selbstversuch (1990) directed by Peter Bird, is a radical exercise in ...
Smith, Keith
(1917-2011) Australian radio and television broadcast and author, most famous as for his "Pied Piper" interviews with children; his sf novel, OGF: Being the Private Papers of George Cockburn, Bus Conductor, a Resident of Hurstfield, a Suburb of Sydney, Australia (1965), is a mild-mannered rather spoofish Satire set in the very Near Future of an erratically urbanizing Australia. [JC]
Broster, D K
(1877-1950) UK author of historical and weird fiction, noted within the fantasy genre for Couching at the Door (coll 1942) and for "Clairvoyance" in A Fire of Driftwood (coll 1932). Her evocatively titled World under Snow (1935) with G Forester is not sf, although sometimes listed as such, but a murder mystery with a winter setting. [JE] see also: Fantasy Entries. /
DeVito, Joe
(1957- ) US artist and sculptor, sometimes as Joseph DeVito, who graduated from the Parsons School of Design in 1981, studied further at the New York Art Students League, and takes a special interest in palaeontological subjects. He has produced many genre book and magazine covers since 1984, including Dinosaur images for the vt of David A Drake's Time Safari (coll of linked stories 1982; exp ...
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 ...