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Thursday 12 March 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 9 March 2026
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John Carter: Warlord of Mars
Board and counter Wargame (1979). Simulations Publications Inc. Designed by Mark Herman, Eric Goldberg. / While most easily classified as a Wargame, John Carter is actually a fusion of several types of game which have followed generally separate paths of development since its release. Specifically, it combines many of the attributes of Board Games, Wargames and ...
Tompkins, Walker A
(1909-1988) US author, mostly of Westerns; he is of sf interest for Ozar the Aztec (January 1933-June 1933 Street and Smith's Top-Notch all sections under the House Name Valentine Wood; fixup 1935), a Lost Race tale whose inhabitants, under the leadership of Ozar, survive in the contemporary West. [JC]
Rao Zhonghua
(1933-2010) Chinese author and editor at the Shanghai Science and Technology Publishing House, in which capacity he edited journals on metallurgy and, the million-selling Kexue Huabao ["Science Pictorial"] from 1972-1986. A great popularizer of science, in the mode of a Chinese Isaac Asimov, he also wrote many book reviews that helped to push and define the sf genre in China. He played a key role in the flowering of Chinese sf ...
Knight, Kathleen Moore
(1890-1984) US author of detective novels, mostly under her own name, occasionally as by Alan Amos; of sf interest is Pray for a Miracle (1941; vt Jungle Murder 1947) as by Alan Amos, a Lost World tale, set in a tropical jungle where deadly artefacts point to a hidden civilization. [JC]
Sem-Sandberg, Steve
(1958- ) Norwegian-born journalist, translator and author, in Sweden from childhood; his first two novels – Sländornas värld ["The World of Dragonflies"] (1976), an ironized Space Opera whose protagonist must persuade inhabitants of a colonized planet (see Colonization of Other Worlds) to return to the cold embrace of Terra, and the similar ...
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 ...