SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
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Serviss, Garrett P
(1851-1929) US journalist, amateur (but knowledgeable) astronomer and author who majored in science at Cornell University, then studied law, and only around 1874 entered journalism, achieving some fame, writing as the "Sun's Astronomer", for a column on Astronomy in the New York Sun between 1876 and 1892. At the end of 1897 he was commissioned to write an unofficial sequel to an equally unofficial 1897 US newspaper revision of H G ...
Kersh, Gerald
(1911-1968) UK author, born in the county of Middlesex, despite stories that he was born in Russia; in the USA from the 1950s, becoming an American citizen; active from the mid-1930s. He was very prolific in shorter forms but is known mainly for such work outside the sf field as Night and the City (1938) and They Die with Their Boots Clean (1941). Many of his numerous short stories (some 400 were published, over 100 of them never collected in his lifetime) are sf or ...
Groves, Jay
(1922-2010) US teacher of history and economics, and author whose short sf novel – featuring the landing of a flying saucer (see UFOs) – is Fireball at the Lake: A Story of Encounter with Another World (1967). [JC]
Stone, Graham
(1926-2013) Australian bibliographer, involved in Australian Fandom for many years; his only fiction, Zero Equals Nothing (1951 chap) with Royce Williams, is a Space Opera. His main focus in the Australian sf world lay in his creation of several Bibliographies: first of the Australian field, beginning with Australian Science Fiction Index, 1939-1962 (1964); then of British ...
Trollenberg Terror, The
1. UK tv serial (1956-1957) ITV. Produced and directed by Quentin Lawrence, written Peter Key. Cast includes Sarah Lawson, Rosemary Miller and Laurence Payne. Six 25-minute episodes. Black and white. / This is set mainly in an Alpine Hotel where intimations of doom received by a woman with ESP are followed by the revelation that Aliens are on the mountain. / 2. Film (1959; vt The Crawling Eye; vt ...
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 ...