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Friday 4 September 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 31 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Corbett, James
(1887-1958) UK author who served as a lieutenant in the armed forces during World War One and wrote popular thrillers for the lending-library market from 1929 to 1951. Corbett's sf tales, beginning with The White Angel (1931), are as sensational as his thrillers. The Man Who Saw the Devil (1934) is a rewrite of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ...
Forrest, Henry J
(1823-1899) UK compositor, printer's reader, journalist and author of an early sf Utopia, A Dream of Reform (1848), which tamely introduces the usual visitor to a mildly socialist planet designed on anti-industrial lines. The book is thus a vague precursor to the work of William Morris. [JC]
Tavares, Braulio
(1950- ) In addition to being an award-winning Brazilian author, Braulio Tavares is a critic, television writer, musician, composer and a daily columnist for the newspaper O Jornal da Paraíba. He made his first contribution to the field of sf research with the concise handbook, O que é ficção científica? ["What is SF?"] (1986), later publishing the ...
Fisher, James P
(? - ) US author whose sf novel The Great Brain Robbery (1970) is a rather lightweight adventure in which an Alien inveigles a student to its home planet, where it has nefarious uses for his unusual brain. [JC]
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 ...