SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 April 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 13 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Time in Reverse
The notion of Time running backwards, with effects preceding causes, is both strongly counter-intuitive and fascinatingly easy to imagine: playing a movie in reverse is among the oldest and most familiar of special effects. The Time Traveller in H G Wells's The Time Machine (1895) sees his housekeeper apparently moving backwards through the room during the final moments of his return journey from the future. Still earlier ...
Williams, T Owen
(? - ) UK author of whom nothing is known beyond his contribution to the Robert Hale Limited sf list of A Month for Mankind (1970) – a novel in which UFOs prove to be crewed by Aliens from planet Boran who plan to take over the Earth via the usual Invasion. [JC/DRL]
Out of This World [magazine]
UK Digest-format magazine published by John Spencer and Co; edited by Samuel Assael and Maurice Nahum. Billed as "bi-monthly" but two issues only, October 1954 and January 1955. / This short-lived weird-fiction venture from the Badger Books stable is principally notable for the fact that the entire contents of both issues – each comprising five novelettes ...
Journal Wired
Semi-annual Semiprozine from a Small Press in trade paperback form ("bookazine"), Winter 1989 to Summer/Fall 1990, 3 issues only, published and edited from California and Colorado by Andy Watson and Mark V Ziesing. This hip, elegant and irreverent periodical ran fiction by a mixture of interesting new writers and better known names (like Paul ...
Midwinter
Videogame (1989). Maelstrom Games (MG). Designed by Mike Singleton. Platforms: AtariST (1989); Amiga, DOS (1990). / Midwinter is an unusual combination of real time Computer Role Playing Game and Computer Wargame, set on an isolated island in the aftermath of a devastating meteorite strike which has plunged ...
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 ...