SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 10 September 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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Gawsworth, John
Pseudonym of UK editor and author Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong (1912-1970) for most of his work of genre interest, though he signed some work Fytton Armstrong and some T I Fytton Armstrong. He was a close colleague of M P Shiel, and followed him as "ruler" of the mythical Caribbean kingdom of Redonda in 1947, calling himself King Juan I; he created a competent Shiel checklist in the bibliographical ...
Yates, W R
(1950- ) US author of Diasporah (short version in There Will be War, anth 1983, ed John F Carr and Jerry Pournelle; 1985), a tale which moves from the Near Future destruction of Israel (and Islam) in a nuclear Holocaust to the re-establishment of a Zionist state in a ...
Tron
Film (1982) Lisberger/Kushner/Walt Disney. Directed by Steven Lisberger. Written by Lisberger, from a story by Lisberger, Bonnie MacBird. Cast includes Bruce Boxleitner, Jeff Bridges, Cindy Morgan and David Warner. 96 minutes. Colour. / In this pleasing but lightweight film, a young man (Bridges) seeks evidence about dirty work in the Computer company from which he has just resigned. Smuggled into the firm's building by friends, he is ...
Barker, M A R
Working name of Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker, born Phillip Barker (1929-2012), US academic specializing in linguistics, game designer and author. His best-known genre creation is the enormously detailed Science Fantasy world of Tékumel (which see), the setting of his early Role Playing Game Empire of the Petal Throne (1975); further related ...
Bond, Nancy
(1945- ) US author best-known for her Young Adult fantasy, A String in the Harp (1976). Of her other works, The Voyage Begun (1981) is sf, in which a quixotic scheme to build a boat in a world ravaged by Pollution and punishing scarcity becomes a moving study of an attempt to come to terms with the real world; and in Another Shore (1988) a young woman finds herself in ...
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 ...