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Thursday 22 October 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 19 October 2026
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Peterkiewicz, Jerzy
(1916-2007) Polish author active as a poet in his native land from 1934 until he was forced to escape in 1940, spending World War Two in the UK, where he settled, wrote in English, and was married to Christine Brooke-Rose 1948-1975. His first novel in English, The Knotted Cord (1953), a tale dense with folklore, was published as by Jerzy Pietrkiewicz, the original spelling of his surname. The Quick and the Dead (1961) is an ...
Picacio, John
(1969- ) US illustrator who graduated in 1992 from the University of Texas at Austin and practised as an architect for some years until, in 2001, becoming a full-time artist; since then he has published at least one book cover a month on average, producing also interior illustrations and others. His first book commission was for the 1996 30th-anniversary edition of Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man (September 1966 ...
Kimbriel, Katharine Eliska
(1956- ) US web designer and author whose work of sf interest – though she has published some fantasy stories – is restricted to the Nuala sequence of Planetary Romances: Fire Sanctuary (1986), Fires of Nuala (1988) and Hidden Fires (1991). Threatened by mutations (caused by high radioactivity in the planetary crust) and by intergalactic war, the inhabitants of the ...
Hansman, William
(1913-2000) Canadian-born US author whose sf novel is The A.G. Man (1968). [JC/DRL]
Vaughan, Ralph E
(1954- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Nighttime" in Etchings & Odysseys for December 1986. He has spent most of his subsequent career adding to the Cthulhu Mythos as adumbrated (but not created) by H P Lovecraft, through his Sherlock Holmes in the Cthulhu Mythos Adventures beginning with a novella, ...
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 ...