SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
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Randall, Robert
Pseudonym used on collaborative stories – about sixteen in all, from "No Future in This" (May 1956 Science Fiction Quarterly) to "A Little Intelligence" (October 1958 Future) – by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett. Silverberg was very young at the time. The most notable of these were the Nidorian series, ...
British Science Fiction Association
Despite their names, the British Science Literary Association (1931), organized by Walter Gillings, and the first British Science Fiction Association (1933-1935), organized by the Hayes SF Club, failed to become much more than local groups. The UK's first truly national organizations – the Science Fiction Association (1937-1939), the first ...
Pragnell, Festus
Working name of Frank William Pragnell (1905-1977), UK police constable, clerk and author who was known all his life by his father's first name, Festus (even in the 1911 census, his wedding banns and his own will: "Frank William, known as Festus"). He began to publish work of genre interest in the US Pulp magazines with "The Venus Germ" in Wonder Stories for November 1932 with R F Starzl, his own ...
Gorman, Ed
(1941-2016) US author, principally of crime, western and horror fiction, in which fields his reputation was high. He was active in Fandom in the 1950s and 1960s, in the latter decade publishing the Fanzine Ciln. His principal contribution to sf was his co-authorship as Richard Driscoll of the Star Precinct trilogy with Kevin D Randle; this opens with Star Precinct (1992) and ...
Baraniecki, Marek
(1954- ) Polish environmental engineer, journalist and author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Karlgoro, godzina 18" ["Karlgoro, 6 p.m."] in Fantastyka for January 1983, stylistically rather conventional and plain but conceptually an invigorating meditation on the power of human spirit and mind versus chaos. The story involves a group of military mentalists supervised by a spiritual guru of incredible powers ...
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 ...