SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 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.
Site updated on 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Milne, Janis
(? - ) UK author of a Young Adult Space Opera, The Starship Dunroamin' (1987), in which a gimmicked washing machine converts an inner-city English house into a Spaceship. [JC]
Hoch, Edward D
(1930-2008) US author best known for his crime novels and stories; his first story, "Village of the Dead" in Famous Detective Stories for December 1955, introduces Simon Ark, an Occult Detective [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] who claims to be a 2000-year-old Coptic priest. Some of these stories are collected in The Judges of Hades and Other Simon Ark Stories (coll 1971), ...
Farnsworth, Christopher
(1971- ) US screenwriter and author who came to wide notice with the President's Vampire sequence beginning with Blood Oath (2010), which features episodes from the life and work of Nathaniel Cade, a Vampire who, on being captured in 1867, is pardoned by President Ulysses S Grant on condition that he swear to use his powers on behalf of American Presidents from that time onward. The first tale deals with his more or less ...
LaMaster, Slater
(1890-1936) US playwright and author whose Cupid Napoleon (7-28 January 1928 Argosy All-Story Weekly as "Luckett of the Moon"; 1934) purports to be a Planetary Romance but turns out to be a hoax perpetrated by Napoleon Bonaparte Luckett in the Near Future; the intended Satirical effects of the tale are seriously jumbled. ...
Rushton, William
(1937-1996) UK actor, cartoonist, editor, journalist and author who often wrote or drew as Willie Rushton. The influence of J B Morton is particularly clear in serial cartoon Satires like Brimstone Belcher (June 1960-March 1961 Liberal News), an influence which permeated the journal Private Eye, which Rushton co-founded in 1961. As actor and comic, he was a founding participant in the UK satirical ...
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 ...