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Sunday 12 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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Winship, Glen B
(1887-1966) US author of the nonfiction Wealth (1919), and Volonor (1925), a Dystopia in which women must engage in free love at male behest, while being denied the right to own property (Economics; Feminism; Sex; Women in SF). [JC]
Sagan, Carl
(1934-1996) US astronomer, planetary scientist and author, professor of astronomy and space sciences and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Sagan played an active role in the Mars experiments carried out by Mariner 9 in 1971, worked also on the Viking and Voyager projects, and was responsible for placing a message to alien life aboard the interstellar spaceship Pioneer 10 (Jupiter flyby 1973). He was ...
Hingley, Ronald
(1920-2010) Scottish academic specializing in Russian studies, a translator from the Russian – most notably of the works of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) in nine volumes (1974-1980) – and author. His Near Future sf novel Up Jenkins! (1956) satirically presents a UK split in two after a civil war, the northern half remaining more or less free, the southern half transformed into People's Britain, and ruled in totalitarian ...
McGill, Robert
(1976- ) Canadian author, active from around 2000. He is of sf interest for his third novel, A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life (2022), set in a Near Future world in which the only cure for an ongoing Pandemic is a process known as flatpacking. A diseased person's body is dehydrated, filled with a poison fluid claimed to be restorative, and the resulting ...
Dixon, Roger
(1930-1983) UK accountant and author, who also wrote as by Charles Lewis and (almost certainly) John Christian; his epic adventure about humankind's future fate, Noah II (1970; rev 1975), is based on a story idea by Dixon and his agent, Basil Bova, and began the aborted Quest series. Five Gates to Armageddon (1975) as by John Christian is a Near Future thriller involving a new Weapon in the ...
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 ...