SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 9 March 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 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: The League of Fan Funds
Schmidt, Arno
(1914-1979) German translator and author noted for his linguistic innovation and the swift wit of his experimental fictions, which project an air of calculatedly cerebral quarrelsomeness; he repeatedly acknowledged the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he translated, and whose speculations shape and dominate his most ambitious novel, Zettels Traum ["Bottom's Dream"] (1970). The marked and extremist manipulation of ...
Danforth, Mildred E
(1900-1985) US author of the routine First Contact tale, From Outer Space (1963). [JC]
Mitchell, Karen Anne
Pseudonym of US author Harold Torger Vedeler (1962- ), of sf interest for two novels in the Vandhaqa sequence: The Usahar (2004) evokes Feminist speculations about Women in SF in its portrayal of the world Vandhaqa, where women are slaves under the thumb of a Robot entity, who is awakened to their plight; and in Finding Words (2009), the freed ...
Ship of Fools
A traditional Fantasy theme dating back to medieval times, in which a ship – the Narrenschiff or Ship of Fools – carries all sorts of persons on an endless voyage in search of Utopia, providing an easily visualizable literal vehicle for allegorical Satire on the follies of humanity, the most famous such vehicle probably being "The Ship of Fools" (before 1500) by Hieronymus Bosch ...
Patrice, Helen
(1964- ) Australian poet and author who began to publish work of genre interest as Helen Sargeant, beginning with "The Questing Knight" in Far Out 3 for 1986, but who is best known for the set of linked poems assembled as A Woman of Mars: The Poems of an Early Homesteader (coll 2011 chap), during which the narrator travels with her lover to Mars and settles there. Some of the imagery reflects, with measured nostalgia, Ray ...
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 ...