SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 5 September 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 31 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Morris, Desmond
(1928-2026) UK ethologist, zoologist, surrealist painter and author who remains best known for popularizations of sociobiology, arguing in The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (1967) that human behaviour could be usefully studied (though not comprehensively defined) through ethological comparisons with our primate relatives. He is of some sf interest for his only novel, Inrock (1983; exp 2013), whose young protagonist enters a surreal ...
Goodman, Allegra
(1967- ) US author, most of whose fiction has been nonfantastic, beginning with her first novel, Kaaterskill Falls (1998). She is of sf interest for The Other Side of the Island (2008), a distant Near Future Dystopian tale set in a kind of Ruined Earth: the planet is now virtually covered by the rising waters caused by ...
Fandom
Active readers of sf and fantasy (see Science Fiction) can be called fans. Fans who also maintain contacts with other fans through Fanzines and Conventions can be described as participating in Fandom, a loose affinity group (or, increasingly, a set of groups) whose origins go back to the late 1920s, shortly after the appearance of the first SF Magazines, where from ...
Birdman and the Galaxy Trio
US animated tv series (1967-1969). Hanna-Barbera Productions for NBC-TV. Created by Alex Toth. Produced by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna with Lewis Marshall. Directed by Barbera and Hanna. Writers included Neal Barbera, Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan. Cast includes Keith Andes, Dick Beals, Ted Cassidy, Virginia Eiler, Don Messick and John Stephenson. Uncertain number (40?) of 30-minute episodes, each comprising two Birdman ...
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 ...