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Thursday 13 November 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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Ballou, Arthur
(1915-1981) US business consultant and author of two Young Adult sf novels: Marooned in Orbit (1968), which features a mission to save a disabled spaceship in lunar orbit; and Bound for Mars (1970), featuring some of the same characters as the previous novel, about a space mission endangered by one of its crew after its leaves a Space Station en route to Mars. [JC]
Wright, Henry
(1852-circa 1940) UK author whose Mental Travels in Imagined Lands (coll 1878) contains a series of tales set in heavily allegorized Utopian settings, including Fortuneland and Nomunniburgh. Of more direct sf interest is Depopulation: A Romance of the Unlikely (1899), set in a moderately Near Future America, in the city of Minosa where Trusts (dedicated to population growth) are opposed by the ...
McAuley, Paul J
(1955- ) UK biologist and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Wagon, Passing" in Asimov's for June 1984; his best shorter work has been assembled as The King of the Hill and Other Stories (coll 1991), The Invisible Country (coll 1996), Little Machines (coll 2005) and the comprehensive A Very British History: The Best Science Fiction of Paul McAuley (coll 2013), ...
Journey to the Beginning of Time, A
Czechoslovakian film (1955; original title Cesta do pravěku; vt Journey to Prehistory). Filmové Studio Gottwaldov. Directed by Karel Zeman. Written by J A Novotný and Karel Zeman. Cast comprises Vladimír Bejval, Petr Herrmann, Zdeněk Husták and Josef Lukáš. 93 minutes. Colour. / After a boy finds a fossil trilobite near a cave, his three teenaged friends take him to Prague's natural history museum to see the exhibits, ...
Richardson, Frank
(1870-1917) UK barrister and author, mostly of light fiction; he was the coiner of the term "face-fungus" to describe whiskers. The Bayswater Miracle (1903) mildly examines Gender issues through an Identity Exchange between a man and a woman; though it lacks any sf rationale, it is unusual in that the exchange is irreversible, with the reluctant male narrator, now physically female, marrying his sweetheart, who is ...
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 ...