SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 16 August 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 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Skyrack
UK Fanzine (1959-1971) edited by Ron Bennett, which was Britain's principal and indispensable Newszine throughout the 1960s. There were 96 issues in all, stencil-duplicated in UK quarto format, typically 4pp; #1 was dated April 1959 and #96 was dated July 1971, there having been a long gap since the penultimate #95 in May 1968. The title masthead used from #2 onward was lettered by Eddie ...
Nation, Terry
(1930-1997) UK author of television screenplays and other works, latterly resident in the US. He has the distinction of exercising a formative influence on three major sf series, Doctor Who (1963-current), Survivors (1975-1977) and Blake's 7 (1978-1981). / Nation began his writing career producing comedy material, for Tony Hancock among others, in the late 1950s and early ...
Edge Detector
Canadian Semiprozine, published and edited by Glenn Grant of London, Ontario (for the first two issues; Montreal, Quebec for the third issue) which saw three letter-size issues in Summer 1988, Summer 1989 and Summer 1991, all three computer-typeset. The magazine sought to develop experimental fiction beyond the Cyberpunk revolution and included work by Paul ...
Bedsheet
A term used erroneously to describe a Magazine format, ostensibly in contrast to Pulp and Digest. The size implied – sometimes called large pulp format – is the largest of the three; it varies slightly but approximates 11¾in x 8½in (298 x 216 mm) – i.e., close to A4 (297 x 210 mm). The term was given general currency when included by Richard "Dick" ...
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 ...