SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
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Scientific Hoax
A few early sf stories were tall tales or hoaxes told with clear or likely intent to deceive: examples include chronic hoaxer Edgar Allan Poe's Balloon adventure "Hans Phaall – A Tale" (June 1835 The Southern Literary Messenger), the "Great Moon Hoax" concocted by Richard Adams Locke (whom see), and J L Riddell's ...
Hanmura Ryō
Pseudonym of Japanese sf author Heitarō Kinō (1933-2002), often also romanized as Ryō Hammura. A sometime cabaret bartender and advertising executive, he drifted into an authorial career with "Shōkaku" ["Harvest"] (March 1963 S-F Magazine), which won a consolation prize in a new authors competition run by the publisher Hayakawa Shobō. / Running throughout his oeuvre is a vigorous mistrust of authority and the establishment, ...
Walkham, Walter
Pseudonym of UK consulting engineer and author James Harvey Trevithick Ivory (1921-2005), who contributed a single Space Opera to the Robert Hale Limited sf line: When Earth Trembled (1980). [JC]
Steampunk
Item of sf Terminology coined by K W Jeter in a letter (April 1987 Locus) – by analogy with Cyberpunk – to describe the modern subgenre whose sf events take place against an Alternate History nineteenth-century background (see also Malachronism), usually an ...
Linaker, Michael R
(1940-2024) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with the Scorpion series comprising Scorpion (1981) and Scorpion: Second Generation (1982), both Horror in SF tales featuring Mutant Monster scorpions. / Of greater sf interest is the Cade sequence of Near Future police procedurals, beginning with ...
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 ...