SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 26 June 2022
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 20 June 2022
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Walsh, M C
(? -? ) US author of a Lost Race novel, The Golden Idol: A Tale of Adventure in Australia and New Zealand (1891), in which explorers discover and attempt to exploit an Underground treasure guarded by the last survivors of an extinct race, though the line may be preserved through the departure of the tale's protagonist with a woman he has fallen in love with. [JC]
Mythology
The relationship of mythology to sf is close and deep, but not always obvious. Part of the confusion stems from the widely held belief that sf is itself a form of latter-day mythology, fulfilling comparable hungers in us. James Blish took issue with this argument, pointing out that myth is usually "static and final in intent and thus entirely contrary to the spirit of sf, which assumes continuous change". We restrict ourselves below to the role of traditional mythologies in sf and to the ...
Mayo, W S
(1811-1895) US physician and author whose Kaloolah; Or, Journeyings to the Djébel Kumri: An Autobiography of Jonathan Romer (1849) [for vts see Checklist] may have taken its hoax-like, factoid-filled story – with Mayo himself posing as the editor of Romer's manuscript – from Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of A Gordon Pym, of Nantucket (1838), and its exotic Fantastic Voyage narrative from the early works of Herman Melville, whose Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale (1851 2vols) was in ...
House, Brant
House Name associated with the magazine Secret Agent "X" (which see for fuller details). The Secret Agent "X" character was created by Paul Chadwick (1902-1972), who wrote many of the long lead stories by whose titles the issues are traditionally distinguished; another prolific contributor, also as House, was G T Fleming-Roberts (1910-1968). Seven of these title stories, mostly by Chadwick, were reissued as novels by Corinth Books in 1966 [see Checklist below]; but this attempted revival was ...
Captain Hazzard
US Pulp magazine, one issue, May 1938, published by Ace Magazines; no editor named but it was handled by A A Wyn (1898-1967) and his wife Rose Wyn. The (short) novel contained in this issue, "Python-Men of the Lost City", was by Paul Chadwick (1902-1972) under the alias Chester Hawks. Hazzard, an imitation of Doc Savage with great mental powers developed to overcome his blindness, along with a group of assistants, combats a master criminal. The lead novel was reprinted in facsimile in 1974 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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. Criticized at first for its failure to annotate its findings – so that, for instance, pseudonyms used for sf could not be ...