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Saturday 11 July 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 7 July 2026
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XYZ
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? -? ) of The Vril Staff (1891), an unauthorized Sequel by Other Hands to Edward Bulwer Lytton's The Coming Race (1871), in which vril is the Power Source for a vastly effective Weapon, whose wielder initially eliminates Indians in the ...
Lewis, Martin
Working name of Martin Owen Lewis Petto (1980- ), UK critic and editor. As a reviewer, he has published widely since 2001, notably at Strange Horizons. Lewis has been reviews editor for the British Science Fiction Association's critical journal Vector since 2010 and was a judge for the Arthur C Clarke Award in ...
Skinner, Michael
(1953- ) US journalist, editor and author, mostly of nonfiction books about the American military during the 1980s. Of sf interest is the Near Future Technothriller First Air: A Novel of Air Combat in the Persian Gulf (1991), set after Iran has nuked Baghdad, trapping American forces who can only be rescued by a maverick private corporation whose advanced planes are operated by madcap fighter ...
Suspended Animation
The notion of suspended animation is one of the oldest literary devices in sf, by virtue of its convenience as a means of Time Travel into the future (see also Sleeper Awakes). It is used in Utopian romances like L S Mercier's Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred (trans 1772), Mary Griffith's ...
Shurkin, Joel N
(1938- ) US journalist (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1979) and author whose very Near Future medical Technothriller, Helix (1979) with Desmond Ryan, extrapolates from the real effects of Legionnaire's Disease to depict a virulent nationwide Pandemic. [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 ...