SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 29 May 2023
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 29 May 2023
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Cayea, John
(? - ) US illustrator, seemingly active only from around 1970 to around 1981, his first cover being for Eando Binder's The Night of the Saucers (1971) from Belmont Books. Almost all of his following work was for Doubleday and Company, beginning with Jacqueline Lichtenberg's House of Zeor (1974). A Cayea cover soon became easy to recognize, often ...
Darlington, Andrew
(1947- ) UK poet and author, sometimes writing as Andy Darlington, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Stairs and Steps" in Corridor for May-June 1972; a selection of his poetry has been assembled as Euroshima Mon Amour: Poems from the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (coll 2000 chap) (see Poetry), and a selection of his short fiction as A Saucerful of Secrets (coll 2016). Darlington's sf novel, ...
Merriman, Effie W
(1857-1937) US author of several books under her own name, and circa 1898 editor of the magazine The Housekeeper; she also wrote under her married name Mrs James Fifield. A Queer Dilemma and Other Stories (coll 1898) is of sf interest as a collection of Fantastika that includes the title story's astral travel leading to unwelcome Identity Exchange; a ...
Ion Drive
A common item of sf Terminology derived from a theoretical means of Rocket propulsion. Chemically fuelled rockets are hampered by the necessity of carrying large burdens of fuel. Other systems, including the ion drive, propose using much lighter fuels, compensating for the decrease in the mass available for propulsion by ejecting it at correspondingly higher velocities. Ions (charged particles) can be accelerated to enormous ...
Reed, Amy
(? - ) US author of Young Adult tales set in the contemporary world, at least one of which, The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World (2019), is fantasy. She is of sf interest for Tell Me My Name (2021), which is set on a quasi-suburban Island near a Near Future Seattle struggling with social and political dysfunction as well as ...
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. ...