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Tuesday 17 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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Myrus, Don
(1927-2016) US editor, a staff member at Omni. He co-edited the first four Omni anthologies with Ben Bova, then editor of that magazine, beginning with The Best of Omni Science Fiction (anth 1980) and continuing the series as sole editor for two further volumes. [RR]
Vira, Soma
(1932-2003) Indian-born poet and author, based in USA where she died. She is of sf interest for her Planet Keepers sequence beginning with Checkmating Aliens (1996); the publication sequence, with later volumes in terms of internal chronology published earlier, seems not to correlate with the order in which the series was written. In a highly baroque Space Opera idiom, the sequence describes complicated conflicts and joinings between humans ...
Elliott, John
(1759-1834) UK author, imputed author (though he seems young for the task) of The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman ... (1778) as by Hildebrand Bowman, a Fantastic Voyage into various remote parts of the South Pacific, including Islands and Utopias, some in nether New Zealand; see Checklist for full title, which is thorough. It has been suggested in the magazine ...
X Series, The
Videogame series (from 1999). Egosoft. / The X Series is a line of Space Sims, descended from Elite (1984). The player has considerable freedom to explore, trade, mine asteroids, fight pirates (or become one), carry out missions (including bounty-hunting and passenger transport), or create a commercial empire of space-based factories and fleets of starships. The game universe itself is ...
Jeff Hawke
UK Comic strip created by writer Eric Souster and artist Sydney Jordan (1928- ). Some scripts were written by William Patterson and many of the later ones by Jordan. Jeff Hawke first appeared in 1954 in the London Daily Express, and ceased in 1974. During its lifetime it was the UK's leading sf comic strip. The overall scenario depicted Earth as a primitive planet on the periphery of a highly advanced galactic civilization, whose ...
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 ...