SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 25 September 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 18 September 2023
Sponsor of the day: Terrence Somerville
Lighthall, W D
(1857-1954) Canadian politician, lawyer and author, of whose several novels The Master of Life: A Romance of the Five Nations and of Prehistoric Montreal (1908) is of some sf interest for its argument that the historical sixteenth-century (or earlier) creation of the Five Nations – a grouping of Native American cultures, also known as the Iroquois League – was inspired by an earlier nation-forming culture now so obscure that it constitutes a ...
Heuston, B F
(1859-1907) US author of a Utopia, The Rice Mills of Port Mystery (1892), set in the Near Future Pacific Rim on Puget Sound, where free trade signals the arrival of a better world. [JC]
Fernandez, Cristina
(? - ) US author whose Young Adult How to Date a Superhero (And Not Die Trying) (2022) spoofishly confronts its young protagonist – herself possessing the mild Superpower of a perfect sense of time – must come to terms with the discovery that her unsatisfactory boyfriend is in fact a teenaged Superhero [JC] She should not be ...
Hruska, Alan
(1933-2022) US attorney, publisher, filmmaker, playwright, screenwriter and author whose sf novel, Borrowed Time (1984), attempts with some success to suggest analogies and crossings between various Parallel Worlds and the bicameral human brain (see Julian Jaynes). His first two films, both dramas involving the law, appeared in the twenty-first century. [JC]
Ferrigno, Robert
(1947- ) US author, most of whose novels have been thrillers, beginning with The Horse Latitudes (1990). He began to publish work of sf interest with "Perfect Lover" in Beyond #17 in 1990. The sf Assassin trilogy, beginning with Prayers for the Assassin (2006), is set in the Near Future America of 2040, whose balkanization has been triggered by terror attacks which have destroyed ...
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 ...