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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 ...
Selected Science Fiction
Australian Digest-size magazine. Five slim (32pp saddle-stapled) monthly issues, May to September 1955, published by The Malian Press, Sydney; edited anonymously by the publisher James Mitchell. Selected Science Fiction, a companion to American Science Fiction Magazine, reprinted US material of quite good quality, including work by Philip K ...
Vivenair, Monsieur
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? -? ) of A Journey Lately Performed through the Air, in an Aerostatic Globe [for full title see Checklist below] (1784 chap), a Proto-Sf Fantastic Voyage by Balloon to the planet Georgium Sidus, which is the name originally given on its 1781 discovery to Uranus (see ...
Whittemore, Edward
(1933-1995) US case officer for the CIA 1958-1987, specializing in Asia and the Middle East (where much of the action in his novels takes place), and author whose first novel, Quin's Shanghai Circus (1974), serves as a rampageous, gonzo prelude (see Horror in SF) to the rest of his small oeuvre. Fairly clearly influenced by authors like Thomas Pynchon, and perhaps Richard ...
Gardner, Erle Stanley
(1889-1970) US lawyer and author, most famous for the eighty-two volume Perry Mason detective series beginning with The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933). He had been extremely prolific from the start of his career around 1921, publishing at least 60 stories and a novel in Pulp magazines in 1933 alone; he spent almost no time at all on sf. His first story of genre interest was "Rain Magic" for (20 October 1928 Argosy ...
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 ...