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Wednesday 11 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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Cox, Erle
(1873-1950) Australian author and journalist who began to publish fiction as early as 1908, though he was better known as a reviewer and columnist for The Argus and the Australasian 1918-1946, shifting to The Age from 1946. His best-known sf novel is Out of the Silence; a Romance (19 April-25 October 1919 The Argus; 1925; rev 1932; further rev, cut 1947), about the attempt by the female representative of an otherwise extinct super-race ...
Space Sim
Term used to denote a form of Videogame in which the player is commander or (typically) pilot and sole crew of their own Spaceship. The behaviour of the spacecraft generally resembles that of a World War Two era fighter aircraft more closely than it does that of any likely actual space vehicle; as in the Star Wars films, accuracy in this area does not ...
Sleator, William
(1945-2011) US composer and author, in the latter capacity almost exclusively for the Young Adult market. His first novel, The Angry Moon (1970 chap), is a fantasy based on Native American myths. Most of his novels stood alone, though he produced two short series. In the Boxes sequence, comprising Boxes (1998) and Marco's Millions (2001), two mysterious boxes, left in the possession of a young girl with strict ...
Irving, Theo
(? -? ) UK author of whom nothing is known; his sf novel, Half Way to Hades (1901), whose plot – as reported by George Locke in A Spectrum of Fantasy: Volume Two (1994) – involves X-ray vision and Telepathy. [JC]
Khoury, Jessica
(1980- ) US author whose Young Adult Corpus series beginning with Origin (2012) follows the experiences of various teenagers who have been subjected to what seems to be intense Genetic Engineering but which may involve the creation of Androids, at least some of them Immortal. The mysterious Corpus organization gradually ...
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 ...