SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 13 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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Piper, Walter
(? - ) US author of a Sex novel set in the Near Future, Space Swap 1984-8612 (1970). [JC]
Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, The
US animated tv series (2024). Rat Ghost, Animal Pictures, Titmouse Inc, Amazon Studios. Created by Cirocco Dunlap. Directed by Joey Adams, Kacie Hermanson and Becks Wallace. Writers include Joanna Bradley, Cirocco Dunlap, Kirsten King, Anne Lane, Shauna McGarry and Asha Michelle Wilson. Voice cast includes Kieran Culkin, Andrew Dismukes, Stephanie Hsu, Natasha Lyonne, Keke Palmer, Lennon Parham, Maya Rudolph, Sam Smith and Gary Anthony Williams. Eight 27-minute episodes. / Dr. Sleech ...
Spurrell, H G F
(1877-1918) UK biologist, physician and author, in active service during World War One in the Royal Medical Corps until his death just before the Armistice. He is of some sf interest for Out of the Past (coll 1903), which contains two Prehistoric SF novellas plus a similar short tale, each set in a different Asian civilization prior to the founding of China; these stories are made available to the modern world ...
Conviser, Josh
(1974- ) Working name of US screenwriter and author whose Ryan Laing sequence of Near Future thrillers, comprising Echelon (2006) and EMPYRE (2007), posits a world in which contemporary intelligence surveillance has become hugely more sophisticated (capable in effect of not only gathering data but interpreting it). In the first volume, the Cyborg protagonist is instrumental in ...
Williamson, Robert H
(? -? ) UK author whose only known novel, The Sweetness of Revenge (1904) is an adventure with sf elements, including the Invention of an advanced Machine; any Near Future implications of the tale, which takes place mostly at sea, are only dubiously to be inferred. [JC]
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 ...