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Saturday 14 March 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 9 March 2026
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Retro-Pulp
A term which recognizes the renewed interest in Pulp fiction magazines and characters long after the pulp era had finished. To some extent one might argue that this began even before the end of the pulps. The last sf pulp magazine, Science Fiction Quarterly appeared at the end of 1957 (issue dated February 1958), and it had been clear for the last three or four years that the pulps were a dying breed, being superseded by ...
Taylor, D J
(1960- ) UK literary critic, biographer and author whose novels have normally not ventured into the fantastic; of sf interest, however, is The Windsor Faction (2013), an Alternate History tale set at the end of the 1930s in Britain, with Edward VIII (who in the real world abdicated in 1936) still on the throne (see Jonbar Point). Though affected by a demureness typical of ...
Preston, Peter
(1938-2018) UK journalist, editor and author, active in the UK newspaper world from 1959, most prominently as editor of the Guardian 1975-1995; he remained active in executive and other functions with the Guardian group of newspapers, and published actively until his death. Preston is of sf interest for two novels. 51st State (1998) is a Near Future Satire in which an increasingly dysfunctional Britain leaves ...
O'Reilly, John
(1906-1981) US journalist and war correspondent who wrote The Glob (18 February 1952 Life Magazine; exp 1952 chap), an explanation of the theory of Evolution and the Origin of Man, couched in fictional form for younger readers as the life-story of the eponymous creature who crawls out of the swamp and becomes, by stages, Homo sapiens. The earlier pages have some distant relationship to ...
Lensman [series]
Influential Space Opera series created by E E Smith (whom see for full discussion). Other authors of stories set in the Lensman universe are William Ellern, Hideyuki Furuhashi and David Kyle, the last focusing on the three Alien allies of the main series hero Kim Kinnison who like him ...
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 ...