SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 4 September 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 31 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Lone Star
Shortlived Welsh rock band whose debut album Lone Star (1976) is of some genre interest: the tracks "A Million Stars" ("We can take a trip to a million stars / We can take a sky-train to Jupiter and Mars"), "A New Day" and "Spaceships" are fairly accomplished space-operatic thumbnails (see Space Opera). A second album Firing On All Six (1977) is less assured, and the group broke up soon after. [AR] links / ...
Holland, Clive
Pseudonym of UK author Charles James Hankinson (1866-1959) who began publishing stories in the Boys' Papers in the mid 1880s, and who is of genre interest for three novels: Raymi; Or, the Children of the Sun (1889), an eighteenth-century Lost World adventure involving pirates and the discovery of El Dorado in Peru; An Egyptian Coquette (1898; rev vt The Spell of Isis: A Romance of Egypt ...
Shaffer, Eugene Carl
(? - ) US author of three sf novels: The Last Breath (1974), in which apocalyptic Disasters force the evacuation of Earth; The Clones (1980), which takes a dim view of Clones, as they will revolt and must be exterminated; and Panic 7 (1980), in which civilization is again threatened. [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 ...
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 ...