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Friday 10 July 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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Golden Age of SF
It has been said, cynically, that the Golden Age of sf is twelve. (This epigram, often wrongly ascribed or paraphrased with slightly different ages, was coined by the sf fan Peter Graham.) / Certainly there is no objective measure by which we can say that the sf of any one period was notably superior to that of any other. Nonetheless, in conventional usage (at least within Fandom) some older readers have referred to the years 1938-1946 as sf's first Golden Age, ...
Montana, Ron
(1938- ) US author whose published work in Fanzines included "We the People" in 1974 for Craig Strete's Red Planet Earth. His first sf novel, The Sign of the Thunderbird (1977), conveys its Post-Holocaust protagonists to the New Mexico of 1860, where their actions in espousing a free Indian Nation generate an ...
Jackson, G Gibbard
(1877-1935) UK author, usually of tales for boys on aeronautical subjects, and of nonfiction about air travel and other related topics; of sf interest is Arctic Air Terror (1937), a Lost Race tale set in the Yukon Territory. Within a caldera heated by volcanic action, a technologically advanced but priest-ridden civilization of "white Indians", originally from Ancient Egypt, uses its helicopter-like airships ...
Gresswell, Elise Kay
Working name of Elizabeth Gresswell (1877-1944), née Kay, UK author whose Near Future Scientific Romance, When Yvonne Was Dictator (1935), concerns the election of the eighteen-year-old Yvonne initially as prime minister of the UK at a time of Economic disaster, and then, because of the power of her personality, as dictator (see Politics). In ...
Morressy, John
(1930-2006) US academic connected with Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire from 1968, latterly as Writer Emeritus; and author who, After two nonfantastic novels, began his sf career in December 1971 with "Accuracy" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where most of his short fiction appeared. Morressy's early books were generally Space Opera, through which medium he constructed a series of interesting ...
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 ...