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Monday 16 February 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.
Site updated on 16 February 2026
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Mason, Zachary
(1974- ) US computer scientist and author whose first novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey (2007; rev 2010), though it may be read simplistically as a literary fantasia on Homer's Odyssey, successfully invokes the telling literalism of Fantastika in its rewriting of various episodes of the original in more or less Alternate World terms. Some of the ...
Honig, Michael
(? - ) UK doctor and author whose first novel, Goldblatt's Descent (2013), is a nonfantastic satire on the medical profession. Honig is of sf interest for The Senility of Vladimir P (2016), which though set in the Near Future clearly focuses its Satire on Vladimir Putin's regime in Russia. The tale takes place in a dacha (see Keep) where the ...
Wylde, Thomas
(1946- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Target of Opportunity" in Galaxy for September 1974, and who continued to produce short fiction regularly for the next two decades, some of it Hard SF tinged with ironies. His novels have all been Ties: two tales in the Alien Speedway sequence, Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway #2: Pitfall (1988) and ...
Tyson, J Aubrey
(1870-1930) US author whose Near Future thriller, The Scarlet Tanager (1922), which is set in 1930, rousingly presents a submarine pirate and his right-wing cohorts; a tough US intelligence agent opposes their efforts to topple the American government. A UK agent, the actress of the title, also becomes involved. Sf devices include sonar and an invisible Ray. The Barge of Haunted Lives (coll of linked stories ...
Birdsong, Keith
(1959-2019) American artist of Native American (Muscogee Creek-Cherokee) descent who entered the field of sf Illustration in the late 1980s after serving in the United States Army and working as a journalist. After initially doing covers for juvenile sf novels published by Ballantine Books, he came to specialize in painting covers for numerous Star Trek novels, with occasional covers for other ...
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 ...