SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 14 June 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 8 June 2026
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
McCarthy, Helen
(1951- ) UK author, critic and scholar of Manga and Anime; involved since the 1970s with UK Fandom and active since 1981 as a commentator on Japanese popular culture. She co-founded and edited the London-based magazine Anime UK (1991-1996; retitled Anime FX in 1995). Her nonfiction works include most importantly The Anime Encyclopedia (2001; ...
Heslop, Val
Working name of Valentine Voltaire Heslop (1894-1946), Australian author whose Lost Race tale, The Lost Civilization: A Story of Adventure in Central Australia (1936), is set in an Underground world beneath Australia inhabited by a technologically advanced white race, a monarchy descended from both Ancient Egyptians and Mayans. Telepathy is in ...
Starweb
Board and counter Wargame (1976). Flying Buffalo. Designed by Rick Loomis. / Starweb is a Play by Mail (and, more recently, Play by Email) strategy game which, like Stellar Conquest (1974), includes many of the features later seen in 4X Games. Every player begins the game as absolute ruler of a species which ...
Magee, Rufus
(1845-1929) US politician and author tentatively identified as having written The Battle of the Moy; Or, How Ireland Gained Her Independence 1892-1894 (1883), published anonymously in America and the UK. The novel depicts a Near Future European war, during the course of which Ireland gains her independence from Britain. The identification with Magee is based on bibliographical evidence from L W Currey. [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 ...