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Friday 14 August 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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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Morgan, J O
(1978- ) Scottish poet and author, all of whose poetry has comprised book-length narratives, sometimes multi-voiced, sometimes linear, beginning with Natural Mechanical: Being a Rendering of the True Life Stories of Iain Seoras Rockliffe (2009 chap). Of most direct sf interest is the seventh of these tales, The Martian's Regress (2020 chap), set in an unspecified but seemingly distant Near Future, at some point ...
Alternate Worlds
An alternate world – some writers and commentators prefer the designation "alternative world" on grammatical grounds – is an account of Earth as it might have become in consequence of some hypothetical alteration in history. Many sf stories use Parallel Worlds as a frame in which multiple alternate worlds can coexist, sometimes interacting with one another. Previous editions of this encyclopedia discussed ...
Bedford, K A
(1963- ) Australian author whose sf novel, Orbital Burn (2003), complexly depicts an undead female detective (she is kept alive by Nanotechnology after a hacker has infected her biosystems) who is urged by a talking dog on the colony planet Kestrel to trace his master, an Android lad behind whose fabrication by Aliens lie secrets ...
Wheeler, L A
(? - ) US author whose The Kingdom of Kanawha: An Allegory for America (1992) describes the consequence of a Near Future Invasion of America; most of the action takes place in West Virginia, which is nearly overrun by fleeing city-dwellers. A resolute resistance is mounted. [JC]
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 ...