SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 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 13 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Spy-Rays
Traditional item of sf Terminology for various surveillance mechanisms employing some kind of Ray that can penetrate most forms of matter, conferring the power of undetectable eavesdropping upon its operator. E E Smith uses the term throughout his Lensman series and seems to have coined it in the original magazine version of Triplanetary (January-April 1934 Amazing; ...
Butor, Michel
(1926-2016) French critic and author, principally known as a leading exponent of the nouveau roman. Butor was one of the first mainstream and academic critics to consider sf seriously according to the same standards as general literature. He published an invigorating analysis of Jules Verne as early as 1949, and examined the dilemmas and future potential of the field in his penetrating study, "La crise de croissance de la SF" (1953); this was first ...
Science Fiction Review (Monthly), The
Digest-sized semiprofessional critical Magazine (see Semiprozine) published by Bran Dougal. Edited by Martin Last, with Baird Searles and Don Yee as associate editors, the latter dropping out after issue #9 (November 1975). Twenty monthly issues, March 1975 to October 1976, with #17/#18 for July/August 1976 being a double issue. / The ...
SF Horizons
UK critical journal edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison, with Tom Boardman acting as business manager. Digest-sized; two 64pp issues only, Spring 1964 and Winter 1965. An early attempt to establish a serious critical sf journal – and as such a precursor of Foundation – SF Horizons carried critical articles ...
Van Ronkel, Rip
The most common form of his name used by screenwriter Alford Van Ronkel (1908-1965). He is of greatest sf interest for co-scripting the screenplay for Destination Moon (1950). Other genre credits include Destination Space (1959), which he scripted and produced, and – one of his last films – The Bamboo Saucer (1968), for which he wrote the ...
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 ...