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Sunday 8 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.
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Baen, Jim
Working name of US editor and author James Patrick Baen (1943-2006) who began his publishing career in 1972, when he became Gothics editor at Ace Books; in early years, he sometimes signed himself James Baen. He moved to Galaxy Science Fiction in 1973 as managing editor, taking over the editorship in 1974 of both Galaxy and If from Ejler Jakobsson. These magazines were then ...
Gillings, Walter
(1912-1979) UK journalist and editor, active in Fandom (where he was usually known as Wally Gillings) from the early 1930s, though he also signed as Walter H Gillings; he was a founder in October 1930 of the Ilford Science Literary Circle, the first UK sf club; he attended the 1937 Leeds Convention; and in 1937-1938 he published seven issues of an historic Fanzine, ...
Graydon, Robert Murray
(1890-1937) US-born author, long in the UK, of fiction for boys, including several Sexton Blake titles. He also wrote as by Murray Hamilton, Robert Murray and Murray Roberts, most of his work under the last of these names appearing in the Captain Justice sequence. He was the son of the much more prolific William Murray Graydon (1864-1946). [JC/RR]
Kensett, Percy F
(1868-1940) UK author of The Amulet of Tarv: A Romance of the South Downs, 1,000 BC (1925), a Prehistoric SF tale whose present-day protagonists are given access via Time Viewer to the era in question; they are then able to establish Communications with the past. [JC]
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 ...