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Tuesday 11 November 2025

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 November 2025
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Merrill, Harrison R

(1884-1938) US poet, academic and author of Ko-i-Chito: The Indian Boy (1937), a tale for children set in what would become Utah, mixing together Lost Race and Prehistoric SF influences. [JC]

(1794-1842) Irish journalist and author, in England from 1824, an early contributor to Blackwood's Magazine's famous series, Noctes ambrosianae, in which imaginary characters (Maginn's guise was Sir Morgan Odoherty) discuss the world and its figures; his contributions were assembled as The Odoherty Papers (coll 1855 2vols). After a story of some fantastical interest, "The Man in the Bell" (November 1821 Blackwood's), which was an acknowledged influence on ...

Marvel Comics

Eventually named for its first Comic – much as DC Comics was named after Detective Comics – Marvel was founded by Martin Goodman (1910-1992) as Timely Comics before, in the 1950s, being renamed Atlas Comics after its distribution company; it became Marvel Comics in 1963. Marvel Comics #1 (November 1939) featured two of the company's three early mainstays. The Human Torch was an ...

Great Comics

US Comic (1941-1942). Great Comics Publications Inc. Three issues. Artists include S M Iger, Pagsilang Isip, Bob Kane, Rudy Palais and Chuck Winter. Scriptwriters include Jean Press. 68 pages, with 6-7 long strips plus several shorter ones, some non-fiction. / The Great Zarro was once a trapeze artist, but when racketeers kill the circus owner and his daughter – whom Zarro loved – he eats the herbs provided by a ...

Tong Enzheng

(1935-1997) Chinese archaeologist, cultural anthropologist, museologist and author, whose twin careers of academia and sf writing occasionally entwined. As a historian he specialized in the ancient history of Sichuan, Tibetan archaeology, and discussion of a "southern Silk Road", from China to India in early times, writing many landmark works in the field, not listed below. His first sf story "Wuman Nian Yiqian de Keren" ["A Guest from 50,000 Years Ago"] (1959 ...

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 ...