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Sunday 8 March 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.
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Grant, Rob
(1955-2026) UK author, initially best known under the collaborative pseudonym Grant Naylor for his work on the Red Dwarf (1988-current) Television series (which see for discussion). Only one related novel, Grant's solo Backwards (1996), has not been published under this name; as the title suggests, the central sf theme in Backwards is that of ...
Green, Joseph
(1931-2026) US author of sf and technical journalism who also worked for NASA, and who began publishing sf with "The Engineer" in New Worlds for February 1962. An Affair with Genius (coll 1969) assembles some of his better early work. Since 1989 he also published short fiction in Analog, F&SF and other magazines as by Francis Marion Soty. Although many of his 70-plus stories (not all sf) have ...
Simmons, Dan
(1948-2026) US elementary school teacher circa 1971-1987 and author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The River Styx Runs Upstream" in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine for April 1982, and who was for some time thought of primarily as an author of tales of Horror, some of which – along with sf and Fantasy stories – were assembled ...
Road to Hong Kong, The
Film (1962). Melnor. Directed by Norman Panama. Written by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. Cast includes Joan Collins, Bing Crosby, Walter Gotell, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour and Robert Morley. 91 minutes. Black and white. / Veteran con-men Harry Turner (Crosby) and Chester Babcock (Hope) have lured 400 investors with their latest scam, an "Interplanetary Spacecraft" from "Fly-It-Yourself, Inc." that is actually little more than a propeller cap and jet pack worn by Babcock on a modest, ...
Hand, Elizabeth
(1957- ) US critic and author, partner of Richard Grant from 1988 to 1996, from 1996 partner of John Clute; she began publishing work of genre interest with "Prince of Flowers" in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine for February 1988. Her continuing output of short stories has won acclaim and some awards – "Last Summer at Mars Hill" ...
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 ...