SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 14 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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.
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Lapin, Lawrence
(? - ) US academic and author of a medical sf thriller, Super Virus: Immortal Sins (2009), whose doctor protagonist, attempting to save his wife from breast cancer, invents a virus capable of stopping the disease while simultaneously conferring Immortality. But in the meantime he is suspected of murder. The sequence is projected to continue. [JC]
Patchin Review, The
US Amateur Magazine of science-fiction criticism and controversy, edited by Charles Platt from Patchin Place, New York (hence the title). Seven saddle-stitched Digest-sized issues, typically 56pp plus card covers, dated July 1981 to March 1985. / The Patchin Review was intended to address what its editor saw as worrying trends in 1980s sf publishing, in particular the growing ...
Audiozine
An audiozine is a magazine that is provided in spoken or aural form. Until the arrival of the internet, where the podzine took on the role, such magazines were rare, particularly in the sf world. In fact the only one of note was The Centauri Express which was issued as a single ninety-minute audiocassette, featuring adaptations of both new and previously published stories performed by the Radio Theatre Company of Atlanta, Georgia. It had five ...
McAllister, Peter
(1965- ) Australian anthropologist and author, usually of books for younger children; of sf interest is Cosmonaut (2001), a Near Future murder mystery set on a space station where Americans and Russians cohabit uneasily. [JC]
Tinckner, Mary Agnes
(1833-1907) US author whose work of sf interest is San Salvador (1892), a Utopia set in a secret Italian location (see Ruritania) where, under a wise and Christ-embodying monarch whose ancestry is of Lost-Race antiquity, citizens manufacture their beautiful but practical wares by hand, after the model recently promulgated in William Morris'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 ...