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Wednesday 13 May 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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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Coen, Franklin
(1912-1990) US screenwriter, of greatest sf relevance for the script for This Island Earth (1955). He is the co-author of a film Tie, Meteor (1979) with Edmund H North, novelizing the feature film Meteor (1979). [JC]
Taylor, S S
(? - ) US author whose Young Adult Expeditioners series beginning with The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man's Canyon (2012) is set in an Alternate World version of Earth which boasts a wide range of previously unknown continents (see Imperialism), giving its young protagonists various opportunities to attempt to trace ...
Rays
One of sf's trademark Clichés is the use of rays – of any colour or none at all, inhabiting the known electromagnetic spectrum or imaginary new spectra, or entirely based on Pseudoscience – for all manner of showy and/or narratively convenient effects. Exotic rays give ambiguous aid in Medicine or spawn Mutants, but above all they provide glamorous ...
Who, The
Highly regarded UK rock band, formed in 1964 by guitarist and songwriter Peter Townshend (1945- ), vocalist Roger Daltrey (1944- ), bassist John Entwhistle (1944-2002) and drummer Keith Moon (1946-1978). The Who's blues and rock grounding is evident in a range of skilfully noisy and slyly affecting songs about teenage disaffection, some of the most enduring in the rock-and-roll canon. But Townshend's ambition from an early stage was to write ...
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 ...