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Monday 16 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 16 March 2026
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Dietz, William C
(1945-2026) US author who began to publish sf with War World (1986; vt Galactic Bounty 1997), the first volume of his Sam McCade sequence of sf adventures about an interstellar bounty hunter, which continued with Imperial Bounty (1988) and two further titles. The galactic venue of the series exhibits some interesting kinks, and McCade himself gradually gains individuality. Although the angle of approach differs – the protagonist this time ...
Matson, Norman
(1892-1965) US author now best known for his completion, after the death of Thorne Smith, of the latter's The Passionate Witch (1941), capturing Smith's melancholy, mildly madcap, sentimentally erotic style very neatly, despite touches of unSmithian sourness. Matson also wrote a sequel, Bats in the Belfry (1943). A film, I Married a Witch (1942), and the television series Bewitched (1964-1972) were loosely ...
Chesbro, George C
(1940-2008) US author who began to write detective stories in the late 1960s, sometimes as by David Cross, and who is of genre interest for the intermittent – but sometimes essential – sf elements in his Mongo sequence, about a dwarf former circus performer and professor of criminology (see Superheroes), whose real name is Robert Frederickson and who as Mongo the Magnificent runs a detective agency with his brother Garth, beginning with ...
Delius, Anthony
(1916-1989) South African poet (see Poetry) and author who eventually moved, after much political pressure because of his anti-apartheid views, to the UK, remaining there from 1967. His Satire on South African Politics and apartheid, The Last Division (1959), sends a 1980s Union Parliament to a Hell and Devil closely resembling those in Wyndham Lewis's ...
Chapin, Maud Hudnut
(1872-1963) US author of the stories, mostly sf, some very mildly Feminist in their implications, assembled as The Lost Star, and Other Stories (coll 1948 chap). [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 ...