SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 28 August 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 24 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld (see Flat Earth) resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the ...
Tiner, Ron
Working name of UK artist Ronald Charles Tickner (1940-2025), initially best known for his work on children's Comics, then as a book illustrator, and latterly as an educator and author in the fields of comics, sf and fantasy illustration. For financial reasons he was unable to attend art college, so originally followed a career in telecommunications. At age 25 he turned to teaching art in schools, producing Comics art in various genres ...
Cooper, Susan
(1935- ) UK journalist, academic and author; in the USA from 1963. In her first novel, Mandrake (1964), which is sf, the eponymous politician takes over a distressed Near-Future England and, in mystical league with the forces of Nature, begins the process of cleansing the Earth of Man, but is stopped just in time. From that point, Cooper has written mostly fantasy, chiefly for Young Adult ...
Billy the Kid
Pseudonym of American cowboy and outlaw William H Bonney (1859-1881), who was probably born Henry McCarty, becoming Bonney for unknown reasons in 1877, perhaps because his mother remarried, or to dodge arrest; a thief who shot other men in the back. He was also involved in range wars, and possibly originally cast in heroic roles because he featured in situations which – in terms of the cauldron of story of the Western, which was just beginning to boil – ...
BBC Radiophonic Workshop, The
Founded in 1958, this department of the BBC was tasked with providing both sound effects and original music for BBC radio and television programming. Desmond Briscoe (1925-2006) and Daphne Oram (1925-2003), who had previously composed original electronic music for radio works by Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and Giles Cooper, were the founding recruits. They soon established the Workshop's reputation for innovative, striking music and all manner of sound effects. ...
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 ...