SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
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Webster, Henry Kitchell
(1875-1932) US author in whose sf novel, The Sky-Man (1910), a young soldier and inventor, having built a winged lighter-than-air single-person Airship, is flying it in the Arctic where he encounters a young woman searching for her missing father, who has indicated via a message in a bottle that he has discovered a clement Lost World. He saves her from rape, and the tale ends happily. [JC]
Gravel, Geary
(1951- ) US author and (since 1978) a Certified Sign Language Interpreter. Most of his later work has been fantasy [see Checklist], though he began publishing work of interest with the sf Autumnworld Mosaic sequence comprising The Alchemists (1984) and The Pathfinders (1986), set in a Galaxy abandoned by superior Aliens after they have passed their technologies on to the human race, which – now that it ...
George, Vernon
Working name of Scottish author George Shirra Gibb Vernon (1885-1959), whose first work of sf interest, Hamish Munro's Experiment: A Thrilling Romance of the East and the Antipodes (1935), is a fantasy published by a vanity house, and whose The Crown of Asia (1939) is a Near Future Yellow Peril Invasion tale, set in the 1940s, the target of the invasion being India. [JC]
Milne, Robert Duncan
(1844-1899) Scottish-born journalist and author, in the USA from about 1864, who published at least 60 sf stories of very considerable conceptual ingenuity, prefiguring many of the themes of the modern genre. Beginning with "A Modern Robe of Nessus" in 1879, he published most of these tales in the San Francisco journal The Argonaut, one of whose editors, Ambrose Bierce, was strongly influenced by his work. Forgotten for many decades after his death, ...
Bradley, Charles M
(1864-1944) US author of a Depression-inspired Utopia, Me-Phi Bo-Sheth (If the Gods So Decide): An Undated Manuscript (1934), in which, among other advances, the day has ten hours. [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 ...