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Sunday 14 June 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.
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Freer, Dave
Working name of South African-born ichthyologist and author David Freer (1959- ), in Australia from 2010, much of whose work has been collaborations with Eric Flint, though The Forlorn (1999), his first novel, is a solo singleton set on a colony planet where humans and Aliens vie for access to a lost Matter Transmission technology. Series with Eric ...
Rothman, Milton A
(1919-2001) US nuclear physicist and long-time sf fan who was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in 1998. He founded the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society in 1935, the oldest continuously running science fiction club in the US, and was the father of Tony Rothman. Besides books of popular science, Rothman wrote a small number of sf stories both under his own name and as by Lee Gregor, most of which ...
Jainschigg, Nicholas
(1961- ) American artist who also publishes as Nick Jainschigg. Before deciding on an artistic career, the young Jainschigg seriously considered becoming a palaeontologist, an interest still reflected in occasional assignments to provide museums with scientifically accurate images of prehistoric animals; he contributed similar artwork to "Extinction" (2006), an episode of the documentary series Naked Science. After receiving a BFA from the Rhode Island ...
Schoch, Tim
(1949- ) US author moderately active in various genres; of sf interest is Creeps: An Alien in our School (1985), a Young Adult tale set in a high school haunted by an Alien; and Flash Fry, Private Eye (1986), which incorporates fantasy elements into a similar mix. [JC]
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 ...