SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 15 August 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 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Timequest
Videogame (1991). Legend Entertainment. Designed by Robert Bates. Platforms: DOS. / TimeQuest is an illustrated text Adventure in which the player, adopting the role of an operative in a future organization of Time Police, must undo the alterations to history made by a rogue agent before they become irreversible. The basic structure of the game is modular (see ...
Ponson du Terrail, Pierre-Alexis
(1829-1871) French author, mostly of popular fiction, best known for the character Rocambole, an Antihero who prefigures many similar adventurers who begin their careers as criminals and end up working, usually in secret, to defend society, a list which includes Maurice LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin, Doc Savage, Leslie Charteris's The Saint, and others; ...
Benett, Léon
Working name of French artist and illustrator Hippolyte Léon Benet (1839-1916), active from around 1867. Along with Édouard Riou, he is the best known of the many illustrators for Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires sequence, beginning with Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), and providing illustrations and covers for twenty-five later novels in the huge project. Other French authors whose ...
Howe, John
(1957- ) Canadian artist, now a resident of Switzerland. After formal training in France, he moved to Switzerland to work on an animated film and decided to remain there. He took on a variety of projects, but an invitation to join other artists in contributing to the 1987 and 1988 J R R Tolkien calendars changed his life. Admiring his approach to Tolkien, publishers then assigned Howe to illustrate books by ...
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 ...