SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
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Irvine, Alexander C
(1969- ) US author who often writes as Alex Irvine; he began to publish work of genre interest with "Rossetti Song" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for March 2000, assembling this and other short work of interest in Rossetti Song: Four Stories (coll 2002 chap), Unintended Consequences (coll 2003) and Pictures from an Expedition (coll 2006). Irvine's main impact in the fields of the ...
Yesterday Machine, The
Film (1963). Carter Film Productions. Directed, produced and written by Russ Marker. Cast includes James Britton, Carol Gilley, Jack Herman, Tim Holt, Linda Jenkins, Robert Bob Kelly, Ann Pellegrino, Olga Powell, Jay Ramsey, Bill Thurman and Charles Young. 85 minutes. Black and white. / Ex-Nazi Scientist Professor Ernst Von Hauser (Herman), based with his henchmen near a small town in Texas, has perfected Time Travel and ...
Postman, The
Film (1997). Warner Bros presents a Tig production. Directed by Kevin Costner. Written by Brian Helgeland and Eric Roth, based on the novel The Postman (fixup 1985) by David Brin. Cast includes Scott Bairstow, Daniel von Bergen, Kevin Costner, Roberta Maxwell, Ron McLarty, Will Patton, Tom Petty, Giovanni Ribisi, James Russo, Joe Santos, Larenz Tate, Olivia Williams and Brian Anthony Wilson. Colour. 170 minutes. / The ...
Tuck, Donald H
(1922-2010) Australian bibliographer and industrial manager whose bibliographical labours in sf since the late 1940s were among the most extensive in the field since the pioneering work of Everett F Bleiler. In recent decades his publications have been partially superseded, but they comprise one of the foundation Bibliographies upon which later workers have built; the increasing sophistication and breadth of coverage of ...
Lane, Jeremy
(1893-1963) US author of two Lost Race tales: Yellow Men Sleep (3 May-31 May 1919 All-Story Weekly as "The Fragrant Web"; 1919) features the sophisticated empire of Tau Kuan, whose rulers are descended from the Great Khans, and who have remained hidden in the Gobi Desert sustained by the Drug Koresh as the once-fertile region desiccated, but whose secretive trade in the drug now ...
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 ...