SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 24 April 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 21 April 2025
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Acriche, Marc Daniel
(? - ) US author whose first novel, the Young Adult Drained (2021), is set in a Near Future New York with a focus on municipal Politics, though strong hints of Climate Change put this in context. By 2048, a tyrannical mayor has transformed New York into a repressive city state; the ...
Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe
US Serial Film (1953; vt Commando Cody). Republic Pictures. Directed by Franklin Adreon, Fred C Brannon and Harry Keller. Written by Ronald Davidson and Barry Shipman. Cast includes Richard Crane, Gregory Gaye, Judd Holdren, William Schallert and Aline Towne. Twelve circa 28-minute episodes. Black and white. / Commando Cody (Holdren), nicknamed after his wartime employment, has been ordered by the government to wear a mask at all times ...
Leon, Mark
(? - ) US author of the Mind-Surfer sequence of Near Future tales – comprising Mind-Surfer (1995), The Gaia War (1995) and The Unified Field (1996) – in the second of which the manufacture of a fully-powered goddess called Gaia brings about a threat of change leading to Disaster in the year 2000, a threat that ...
Burstein, Michael A
(1970- ) US author, science teacher (with a Harvard degree and Boston University Master's in Physics) and science textbook editor who began to publish fiction of genre interest with "TeleAbsence" in Analog for July 1995, a Hugo finalist. He contributed several squibs to the same magazine's Probability Zero department (see Flash Fiction), beginning with ...
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 ...