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Thursday 10 July 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
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Slocombe, George
(1894-1963) UK journalist whose first assignment was to report on the sinking of the Titanic in 1912; and author whose Near Future Dictator (1932), a Scientific Romance set in an imaginary European country, describes the rise of a Dystopian tyranny there. Escape into the Past (1943) features an artist's wife who Timeslips ...
Thomsen, Brian M
(1959-2008) US author and editor (sometimes as Brian Thomsen only) who was a founding editor of the New York Warner Books imprint Questar in the late 1980s, for which he edited many sf books of importance; later, from the early 1990s, he edited fantasy fiction for TSR, and from 1997 operated as a freelance author and editor, including consulting editorial work for Tor Books. / Thomsen began to publish work of genre interest with "The Locksley Scenario" in ...
Mogridge, Stephen
(1915-1986) UK author of tales, usually in series, for children and Juvenile Series markets, who also wrote as by Jill Stevens, publishing in all over thirty titles in the 1950s and early 1960s. He is best known for the nonfantastic New Forest sequence; of sf interest is the Peter sequence, beginning with Peter and the Flying Saucers (1954) and ending with Peter's Denmark Adventure (1958). The sequence is undemanding, ...
Ultrawave
A once fairly common item of sf Terminology, denoting Imaginary Science radio-like Communications operating Faster Than Light. This sf coinage seems to have been first used in Lester del Rey's "Habit" (November 1939 Astounding); it appears in E E Smith's ...
Horrors of Spider Island
Film (1959, released 1960; vt The Body in the Web; vt It's Hot in Paradise). Produced by Gaston Hakim and Wolf C Hartwig. Directed by Fritz Böttger (credited as Jamie Nolan). Written by Böttger, Eldon Howard and Albert G Miller. Cast includes Alex D'Arcy, Helga Franck, Dorothee Parker (credited as Norma Townes) and Barbara Valentin. 89 minutes, sometimes cut to 82 minutes. Black and white. / Nightclub owner Gary (D'Arcy) interviewing assorted women for ...
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 ...