SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 10 August 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 3 August 2026
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Forfang, Åsmund
(1952- ) Norwegian author and journalist. As a student aged 19, his first contribution to the genre was the collection Bilen med det store hjertet ["The Car With the Huge Heart"] (coll 1972 chap): on board the space cruiser Atlona travelling between the stars, the storyteller Gorm ed Ria is employed to entertain the crew, distracting them from the frightening emptiness of Hyperspace. The ...
Taurasi, James V
(1917-1991) US fan, author, editor and publisher active from the mid-1930s (see First Fandom), one of the early movers and shapers of Fandom. Fanzines from his notional Small Press publishing company Fandom House included Cosmic Tales (18 issues Summer 1937-August 1941, plus a special extra on 4 July 1939 for the first ...
Wolff, Betje
(1738-1804) Dutch author, who also signed her work as Elisabeth Wolff, active from the early 1760s. Her short Utopia, Holland in 't jaar MMCCCCXL ["Holland in the Year 2440"] (1777 chap), which is explicitly derived from Louis-Sébastien Mercier's Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred (1771), espouses a clement meritocratic world, with women more or less emancipated (see ...
Viking, Otto
(1885-1966) Danish Catholic bishop, associated with Theosophy, and author whose sf novel is A klode griber ind (written 1954; 1961; trans as A World Intervenes 1964). A young Danish couple is recruited by a secret organization based on Venus that makes use of flying saucers (see UFOs) and has planted a hidden colony in Antarctica, aiming to help Earth through its crisis of development ...
Computer Role Playing Game
Term used to describe a form of Videogame derived from pen and paper Role Playing Games. This entry only deals with the single player variant; the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, a related form in which many individuals share the same virtual world, is considered under Online Worlds. Computer Role Playing Games ...
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 ...