SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 29 December 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.
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Lewandowski, Konrad T
(1966- ) Polish philosopher, journalist and prolific author active since the early 1990s in Polish Fandom and online discussion, often using the pseudonym Przewodas. A graduate of the chemistry department at Warsaw's Polytechnic, who later earned a PhD in philosophy, Lewandowski is best known for his Fantastika, although his portfolio also includes a five-volume criminal saga. ...
Krenkel, Roy G
(1918-1983) American illustrator. A lifelong resident of New York, Krenkel studied at the School of Visual Arts run by Burne Hogarth (1911-1996) after World War Two and started his career at EC Comics, where he became friends with Frank Frazetta. A great deal of his art, heavily influenced by the work of J Allen St John and also by the Australian artist Norman Lindsay (1879-1969), was published ...
Zotz!
Film (1962). Columbia. Directed by William Castle. Written by Ray Russell, based on Zotz! (1947) by Walter Karig. Cast includes Tom Poston. 87 minutes. Black and white. / A poorly regarded comedy adaptation of Karig's offbeat novel. The original gift of the Psi-Power ability to kill via word and gesture here becomes an external McGuffin, the ...
Billy the Kid
Pseudonym of American cowboy and outlaw William H Bonney (1859-1881), who was probably born Henry McCarty, becoming Bonney for unknown reasons in 1877, perhaps because his mother remarried, or to dodge arrest; a thief who shot other men in the back. He was also involved in range wars, and possibly originally cast in heroic roles because he featured in situations which – in terms of the cauldron of story of the Western, which was just beginning to boil – ...
Nahum, Maurice
(1916-1994) UK publisher and editor who was Samuel Assael's junior partner in the John Spencer and Co publishing enterprise (1946-1983), best known or most infamous for its Badger Books (which see) imprint. Assael and Nahum co-edited three of the four 1950s Spencer sf magazines given separate entries in this encyclopedia: Futuristic Science Stories (1950-1954) under the pseudonym ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...