SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 27 April 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 21 April 2025
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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Llewellyn, Edward
Working name of Welsh-born physician, biomedical engineer and author Edward Llewellyn-Thomas (1917-1984), in Canada from 1951; he held professorships variously in pharmacology, medicine, electrical engineering and psychology, publishing at least sixty papers in his linked specialities from the mid 1950s on. Most of his sf is set loosely in the same universe; his first three novels – the Douglas Convolution sequence comprising The Douglas Convolution (1979), ...
Computer Wargame
Term used by this encyclopedia to describe a form of Videogame descended (sometimes quite remotely) from the Wargame. The subject of the Computer Wargame is War, but (unlike First Person Shooters) success does not depend on reaction speed and manual dexterity. Instead, the gameplay is focused on intellectual contests of strategy and tactics; real time variants typically ...
Churchill, David
(? - ) UK author of Young Adult sf novels including It, Us, and the Others (1978), whose young protagonists discover an Alien underwater, and Not My World (1980). He may be the David Churchill credited with the teleplay for the 1986 four-part miniseries presentation of Mervyn Peake's Mr Pye (1953). [JC]
Pellerin, Georges
Pseudonym of unidentified French author (? -? ); in his introduction to that author's only known work of sf interest – Le Monde dans 2000 Ans (1878; trans Brian Stableford as The World in 2000 Years 2011) – Stableford plausibly argues that he may have been a political economist named Gustave Dupuynode (1817-1898), who held similar opinions to those expressed in "Pellerin"'s ...
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 ...