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Saturday 8 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
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Hegland, Jean
(1956- ) US author whose Into the Forest (1996), which is set in the Northern California woodlands, attracted some attention for its moderately positive response to the challenges of life in a Post-Holocaust America. Treating high-technology civilization as a "fugue state", Hegland offers as a life-redeeming substitute the example of the Native Americans, who survived in California for ...
Villains and Vigilantes
Role Playing Game (1979). Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU). Designed by Jeff Dee, Jack Herman. / Villains and Vigilantes was the most popular of the early Superhero themed RPGs, despite its inclusion of several design features that now seem questionable. Notably, characters are assigned a random assortment of Superpowers, making it ...
Johns, Marston
A House Name of the New York publisher Arcadia House, used for a few reissues of titles by R L Fanthorpe and John S Glasby formerly published by John Spencer and Co's Badger Books imprint under the Spencer house name John E Muller. The byline Mel Jay was similarly used for Arcadia House's 1966 reissue of Orbit One ...
Goodman, Alison
(1966- ) Australian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "One Last Zoom at the Buzz Bar" in The Patternmaker (anth 1994) edited by Lucy Sussex, and whose Young Adult sf novel, Singing the Dogstar Blues (1998), lightly sketches in the hard times inflicted upon a teenager by her Alien partner who engages in ...
Paul, Barbara
(1931-2022) US author who began publishing sf with "Answer 'Affirmative' or 'Negative'" in Analog for April 1972, but who became much better known in the 1980s for her detective novels, of which she has written at least twenty; one of them, Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue (1980), depends for its plot upon a psychic character. Earlier Paul wrote several sf novels – An Exercise for Madmen (1978), Pillars of Salt ...
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 ...