SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 23 March 2023
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.
Site updated on 23 March 2023
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Brown, Eric
(1960-2023) UK author who began publishing sf – after a children's play, Noel's Ark (1982 chap) – with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation" for Interzone in Autumn 1987; like several further tales assembled in The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with information. This marriage of Cordwainer ...
Nkweti, Nana
(? - ) Cameroon-born registered nurse, lawyer, academic and author, long in US after much travelling. Her work, which draws exuberantly and learnedly on folklore, sf topoi, Afrofuturism concerns and fabulation in general, takes the form of short stories, many of them assembled as Walking on Cowrie Shells (coll 2021), signalling as a whole a sharp-minded use of the toolkits of ...
Miesel, Sandra
(1941- ) US critic and author, with degrees in chemistry and medieval history. Her involvement in sf was initially as a fan; from 1967 on she published at least seventy-five pieces in Fanzines. As a critic she became active in the 1970s, her first book being Myth, Symbol, and Religion in The Lord of the Rings (1973 chap) on J R R Tolkien. Her next book, ...
Knebel, Fletcher
(1911-1993) US journalist and author, most of whose books are political thrillers, often hovering at the edge of sf. Three of these tales are of particular interest: Seven Days in May (1962) with Charles W Bailey – later filmed as Seven Days in May (1964), directed by John Frankenheimer – describes an attempted military coup in the USA; Night of Camp David (1965) ...
Superman [film]
Film (1978). Dovemead/International Film Production. Directed by Richard Donner. Written by Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton, with Tom Mankiewicz as "creative consultant"; based on a story by Puzo. Cast includes Ned Beatty, Marlon Brando, Jackie Cooper, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Valerie Perrine and Christopher Reeve. 143 minutes. Colour. / Superman's visit to the wide screen was long delayed, ...
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 ...