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Friday 11 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
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Jen, Gish
Working name of US author Lillian Jen (1955- ), "Gish" being a reference to the actor Lillian Gish (1893-1993); almost all of her work, much of it related to her complex Chinese-American background, is nonfantastic, much of it being nonfiction. She is of sf interest for The Resisters (2020), set in a Near Future America where Automation has created a two-class society: the Netted, who have jobs; ...
Bradley, Charles M
(1864-1944) US author of a Depression-inspired Utopia, Me-Phi Bo-Sheth (If the Gods So Decide): An Undated Manuscript (1934), in which, among other advances, the day has ten hours. [JC]
Harris, J Henry
(1875-1962) UK author whose uneasily fin-de-siècle Scientific Romance, A Romance in Radium (1906), follows the investigative journey to Earth of a feathered and winged female Alien named Ma-Myliita, a member of the angel-like Murani from 100,000,000 miles away; her people are confused as to why Murani visitors, who arrived 5000 years earlier, remained on our planet and became mortal. The answer is ...
Phillips, Michael J
(1879-1932) US soldier, editor and author, active contributor of fiction to magazines from 1903 to around 1926; in his Future War tale, In Our Country's Service (1909), the war of 1938 between an augmented America – the Invasion of Canada has led to its being "annexed" in 1928 – and a powerful Japan (see Yellow Peril) ends in the latter's swift defeat, due to the ...
Schenck, Hilbert
(1926-2013) US engineer, university lecturer and author who published his first sf story, "Tomorrow's Weather" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for April 1953, long before he became seriously (though briefly) involved in fiction; much of his nonfiction of the 1950s and 1960s dealt lovingly with the ocean and with oceanological research and exploration technologies. His first two novels are both set in the ocean-girt Cape Cod region of New England, ...
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 ...