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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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Cherryh, C J
Working name of US author Carolyn Janice Cherry (1942- ), who taught for some years (1965-1976) before becoming a full-time writer; she is married to Jane S Fancher, and is the sister of David A Cherry. Since 1976 – when she won the John W Campbell Award for most promising writer – she has produced more novels than stories, publishing several before ...
Brodeur, Greg
(1957- ) US author and screenwriter, married since 1979 to Diane Carey, who began to publish work of genre interest with Star Trek: The Next Generation #31: Foreign Foes (1994) in collaboration with Dave Galanter. Further Ties to Star Trek: The Next Generation and other Star Trek franchise ...
Heathcock, Alan
(1971- ) US author, mostly of short fiction, most of which is nonfantastic; active from the late 1990s. VOLT: Stories (coll of linked stories 2011) contains his best gonzo-grit early work. He is of sf interest for 40 (2022), set in a Near Future America devastated by Climate Change, Pandemic and civil unrest; the tale takes an ...
Billy the Kid
Pseudonym of American cowboy and outlaw William H Bonney (1859-1881), who was probably born Henry McCarty, becoming Bonney for unknown reasons in 1877, perhaps because his mother remarried, or to dodge arrest; a thief who shot other men in the back. He was also involved in range wars, and possibly originally cast in heroic roles because he featured in situations which – in terms of the cauldron of story of the Western, which was just beginning to boil – ...
Palumbo, Dennis
(1951- ) US author who began publishing work of interest with a Perry Rhodan story, "I (Alone) Stand in a World of Legless Humans" (in Perry Rhodan #105: Wonderflower of Utik, anth 1976, edited by Forrest J Ackerman and Pat LoBrutto). In his sf novel, City Wars (1979), set decades after The Levelling when a nuclear Holocaust had ...
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 ...