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Saturday 12 September 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 7 September 2026
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Craig, David
Pseudonym of UK author and journalist Allan James Tucker (1929-2023), whose Roy Rickman series, beginning with The Alias Man (1968), is essentially a jeremiad about a then-imminent 1970s world crisis of the Cold War, with the UK becoming in the Near Future a Soviet satellite, though it offers a sufficient sf displacement through the exploits of the multi-national spy Rickman to be of some interest. [JC]
Paranoia
Paranoia is common in sf; schizophrenia (which we also cover here, although aware that it is a wholly different condition) is comparatively rare. Both are also discussed in rather a different context under Psychology. / It is obviously necessary to distinguish between sf stories about paranoia (a fairly small group) and sf stories whose implicit attitude is paranoid (an extremely large group); most stories discussed below belong to the latter group. Paranoia ...
Grattan-Smith, T E
(1871-1946) Australian ventriloquist, journalist and author of children's fiction (see Children's SF) born Thomas Edward Grattan Smith, using Grattan-Smith for his publishing activities. His Lost World novel, The Cave of a Thousand Columns (1938) exposes two young adventurers to Monsters and a non-human species known as the Birdmen in vast ...
Buck Rogers XXVC
Role Playing Game (1990). Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Designed by Mike Cook, Michael Dobson, Jeff Grubb, Jim Ward, Warren Spector, Jeff Butler. / Buck Rogers was perhaps the first in the line of quintessentially American mass market Space Opera heroes which continued through Flash Gordon, E E Smith's ...
Gawron, Jean Mark
(1953- ) French-born US academic and author, who researches in and teaches computational linguistics; his first sf novel, An Apology for Rain (1974), traces the travels of a woman in search of her brother through a surreal USA. It was followed by Algorithm (1978), in which complex Linguistic operations are used to structure the responses of a sidelined Earth to the greater galaxy, and the more conventionally ...
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 ...