SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 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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Estonia
A full entry for sf in the Republic of Estonia, the Northern European country absorbed into the USSR in 1940 (with a period of Nazi occupation 1941-1944) and independent since 1990/1991, must await a contributor fluent in its language and able to report from the inside on the development of the genre in that region and on untranslated works. Meanwhile, relevant authors given full entries in this encyclopedia are Friedebert Tuglas, who was active from the ...
Terra
Common item of sf Terminology. In sf the Latin form is that conventionally given to the name of our planet, since Earth is ambiguous, meaning both the planet itself and soil – a point frequently made when Earth is sought in E C Tubb's Dumarest sequence: "As well call a planet Dirt, or Soil!" (The irony here is that the same ambiguity exists in Latin, where terra can mean anything from soil or the ground, as in ...
Conesa, Lisa
(1935-1991) Polish-born author, editor, poet and fan, in the UK from a very early age, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Millionaires" in Macrocosm for December 1971 but thereafter wrote only poems, reviews and criticism. She published the well-produced and highly regarded 1970s Fanzine Zimri (eight issues, 1971-1976), whose contributors included Brian W Aldiss ...
Bridges, T C
(1868-1944) French-born author, in UK from childhood and Florida from 1886 to 1894; he also wrote as Christopher Beck, Martin Shaw (which may have been a House Name) and John N Stanton. A prolific author of boys' fiction from 1899 or earlier, including some Sexton Blake Library stories, he wrote several sf tales for the oldest segment of his audience. Of greatest interest are The Secret of the Waters (1917), ...
Robinson, Logan
(1949- ) US author of Evil Star = Beda (1986), a borderline Disaster novel in which Cold War conflicts ("beda" is "disaster" in Russian), and the imminent collision of a Comet with Earth, are treated in Technothriller fashion. [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 ...