SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
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Metamorphosis Alpha
Role Playing Game (1976). Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Designed by James Ward (1951-2024). / Metamorphosis Alpha was the first science fiction RPG. It is set on a Generation Starship (the "Warden") which has suffered an unspecified disaster many years in the game's past, a concept inspired by Brian Aldiss's novel ...
Timmons, Stan
(1966- ) US author, chiefly of Ties, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Life Is But a Dream" in the Marvel Universe Superhero anthology The Ultimate X-Men (anth 1996) edited by Stan Lee. His first novel was the Heavy Metal-related Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2. (1999) with Kevin Eastman. A solo venture is ...
Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future
UK sf Comic-strip character, distinguished in appearance by his long chin and by the zigzag on the outer end of each eyebrow. Dan Dare was created by Frank Hampson for the weekly boys' comic Eagle, in which – with the sobriquet "Pilot of the Future" – he appeared with his Lancashire batman Digby from 1950 until the comic's demise in 1969. Hampson supervised a team of artists, model-makers and photographers to ...
Crossen, Kendell Foster
(1910-1981) US author and editor, active under various names in various Pulp-magazine markets, perhaps most notably as an author of detective stories, his best work being published under his own name and (more successfully) as M E Chaber. The Green Lama series of thrillers (in Double Detective from 1940), as by Richard Foster, gives off fantastic-Pulp-magazine emanations reminiscent of Doc Savage, as the Green Lama himself ...
DeStefano, Lauren
(1984- ) US author who has concentrated exclusively on Near Future Dystopias for the Young Adult market. The Chemical Garden Trilogy, comprising Wither (2011), Fever (2012) and Sever (2013), is set in an American culture savagely distorted by the consequences of a Genetic Engineering ...
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 ...