SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 13 October 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 12 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Darvill-Evans, Peter
(1954- ) UK author and editor, involved in the Games world from about 1976, initiating his writing career with three Fighting Fantasy Ties beginning with Fighting Fantasy Gamebook 25: Beneath Nightmare Castle (1987). He is best-known for his creating for Virgin Books and editing the New Adventures sub-sequence of the overall ...
Technology
Although various literary traditions supplied inspiration and continued support to Proto SF, it was the perception of the power which the new Machines of the Industrial Revolution had to transform the world which gave birth to sf itself, inspiring Jules Verne's imaginary voyages, George Griffith's Future-War stories, H G ...
Johnston, William
(1924-2010) US author, journalist and disk jockey who served in the US Navy Air Corps during World War Two, whose work consists primarily though not exclusively of Ties to various media productions; he wrote more than a hundred such novelizations and original tied novels, beginning to publish work of genre interest with the well-received Get Smart! (1965) and eight further ties to the Television "spy-fi" spoof ...
Burstein, Michael A
(1970- ) US author, science teacher (with a Harvard degree and Boston University Master's in Physics) and science textbook editor who began to publish fiction of genre interest with "TeleAbsence" in Analog for July 1995, a Hugo finalist. He contributed several squibs to the same magazine's Probability Zero department (see Flash Fiction), beginning with ...
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 ...