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Sunday 26 July 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.
Site updated on 20 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
James Tiptree Jr Award
This juried award has been presented since March 1992 in memory of James Tiptree Jr, for sf or fantasy fiction that best "explores or expands gender roles". It is usually given at Wiscon, the annual Convention held in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2019, in the wake of debates about the renaming of the John W Campbell Award (see Astounding Award) and ...
Crawford, Alexander
Pseudonym of UK author Alexander Lindsay (1869-1915), older brother of David Lindsay, of whose six novel-length tales (only four of which reached book form) at least two are of sf interest. His first, Kapak (1911), is a Lost Race tale in which the eponymous king of the now-hidden Incans comes to contemporary England as part of his scheme to re-establish the Empire of his predecessors; battles involving a giant ...
Bradbury, Ray
(1920-2012) US screenwriter, poet and author; in 1934 his father, a power lineman who was having trouble gaining employment in Michigan during the Depression, moved with the family to Los Angeles; memories and images of southern California would be central to Bradbury's work, though the small-town Midwest always remained important in his stories. Bradbury discovered sf Fandom in 1937, meeting Ray ...
Lotz, Sarah
(1971- ) UK author, in South Africa from early adulthood for two decades, active from around 2000; she has collaborated with Louis Greenberg as by S L Grey, with Savannah Lotz as by Lily Herne, and with Helen Moffatt and Paige Nick as by Helena S Paige; she has also done some non-book collaborative work with Lauren Beukes. Much of her work [listed selectively below] is horror (though see ...
Putnam, George Haven
(1844-1930) UK-born publisher and author, in US from childhood, involved in his father's firm, G P Putnam, from 1866, becoming head of the firm in 1872. Of sf interest is The Artificial Mother: A Marital Fantasy (1894 chap), in which a Robot is invented to take over some of the chores of parenthood. In the children's Fantasy tale The Little Gingerbread Man (1910 chap) as by G H P, the eponymous delicacy is ...
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 ...