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Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Kandel, Michael
(1941- ) US book editor, translator and author, best known until the late 1980s for his brilliant translations (see SF in Translation) from the Polish of works by Stanisław Lem, among them a pyrotechnic rendering of the novella "Kongres Futurologiczny" (1971 Poland) as The Futurological Congress (1974), many of whose wordplays as translated here being of necessity Kandel's own ...
Valdes Greenwood, David
(1967- ) US journalist, playwright and author known for nonfiction on gay issues (see Sex). His Young Adult sf novel, Spin Me Right Around (2022) as David Valdes, explicitly reiterates some of the basic Time Travel structure of the film Back to the Future (1985) directed by Robert Zemeckis; ...
Poland
Most Western sf readers associate Poland principally with the work of Stanisław Lem, whose books, widely published, much appreciated, and thoroughly scrutinized in the West, had a profound impact on the field. Lem still remains an iconic figure both in and out of Poland, while his enormous worldwide popularity more or less directly inspired the interest in the earlier Fantastika (John Clute's ...
Richards, Ross
(? - ) US (presumably) author of two Ties of some genre interest: Through the Dark Curtain (1965) as by Desmond Reid for the Guardians sequence about psychic investigators [for Occult Detectives see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]; and The Slave Brain (1967) as by Peter ...
Bone, J F
(1916-2006) US veterinarian, in the US Veterinary Corps for many years until 1976; subsequently a professor of veterinary medicine and author who began publishing sf with "Survival Type" in Galaxy for March 1957. His first sf novel, The Lani People (1962), is his most memorable, perhaps especially for the guilty and/or atavistic pleasures afforded male readers through his depiction of the Alien Lani, human-like females only ...
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 ...