SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 April 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 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Watson, Ian
(1943-2026) UK teacher and author who lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish sf with "Roof Garden Under Saturn" for New Worlds in 1969; he then taught Future Studies for six years at Birmingham Polytechnic, taking there one of the first academic courses in sf in the UK; he became a full-time writer in 1976, publishing around 200 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Carne-Ross, Joseph
(1846-1911) Scottish physician and author, whose Utopia, Quintura: Its Singular People and Remarkable Customs (1886), applies a Satirical edge clearly influenced by Samuel Butler to his description of an Island governed on classless but Eugenic lines by physicians, who also serve as the culture's police force, applying scientific ...
Brown, Joseph M
(1851-1932) US politician, governor of Georgia (1909-1911, 1912-1913), and author in whose sf romance, Astyanax: An Epic Romance of Ilion, Atlantis and Amaraca (1907) Scamandrius, the son of Hector, is not killed by Neoptolemus during the Trojan War, but grows up worthy his nickname of Astyanax, "prince of cities". Gathering the survivors of Troy he first visits Atlantis, but finding treachery there passes on to found New Ilion on an unknown ...
Project V.I.P.E.R.
Film (2002). Cinetel Films, Inc presents in association with Crystal Sky and VCL a Jay Andrews film. Directed by Jim Wynorksi. Written by Curtis Joseph, David Mason. Cast includes Patrick Muldoon, Theresa Russel and Tim Thomerson. 85 minutes. Colour. / In what seems to be the present day, an organism called Project V.I.P.E.R. is en route to Mars. It gets loose and kills the Space Shuttle crew. Back on earth, a pair of mysterious ...
Superman [character]
1. US Comic strip created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, loosely inspired by Philip Wylie's Gladiator (1930), which Siegel had reviewed in his Fanzine, Science Fiction (which see), in 1932. Siegel was an sf fan, creator of several early ...
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 ...