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Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Porter, Kathy
(? - ) US author of Gray/Guardians (2007 pod; rev vt Earth's Ultimate Conflict 2010), the first of the projected Gray/Guardians sequence, set in the Near Future when Earth, vastly suffering from Climate Change, is tempted by two separate Alien civilizations: one promising to evacuate humanity to a safer planet; the other ...
Pike, Christopher
Pseudonym – apparently based on a Star Trek character – of US author Kevin McFadden (1954- ), whose career has been mostly devoted to novels for children and the Young Adult market; some of these, like The Tachyon Web (1986) and, are sf adventures combining orthodox plots (in this case a group of teenagers "borrows" a Spaceship in which they penetrate the eponymous barrier ...
Sessions, Richard
(? - ) US neuroscientist and author in whose first sf novel, Island Woman (1997), a contemporary woman is in a sense kidnapped via Timeslip into eighteenth century New Spain (see California), where it is intended that she create an Alternate History of America; her immersion in the Native American Chumash civilization is anthropologically sound ...
New Zealand
One of the last lands discovered by Europeans, New Zealand was a convenient setting for moral and Utopian tales. The anonymous Travels of Hildebrand Bowman ... by Himself (1778), apparently by John Elliott, anticipates Samuel Butler's satirical Erewhon (1872) and Erewhon Revisited (1901). Utopian fiction by New Zealanders includes ...
Knapp, George L
(1872-1950) US journalist and author, whose The Face of Air (1912) is set on an apparently deserted ship "haunted" by an ape whose Invisibility is the result of a chemist's misapplied Invention. [JC]
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 ...