SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
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Hopkins, Alice K
(1839-? ) US author whose two novels of interest veer dangerously close to occultism, though each features a Lost Race. They are A Daughter of the Druids (1892) as by A K H and Mona the Druidess; Or, the Astral Science of Old Britain (1904); in each case the lost race boasts a woman of power. [JC]
Lewis, Wyndham
(1882-1957) US- or Canadian-born painter and author, primarily in the UK from 1893 (the story of his birth on an American yacht in Canadian waters has been challenged), serving in World War One first as a bombardier, then as a war artist; he lived with Iris Barry circa 1919-1922, having two children with her. For the first part of his career, beginning around 1900, he was primarily active as a painter; he is best known in ...
Clément, François
(1925-2005) French author in whose sf novel, Naissance d'un Île (1973; trans Helen Weaver as Birth of an Island 1975), a small group of surviving French officials attempt to re-establish something like civilization on a small South Pacific Island after a devastating war; a trip to Sydney, New South Wales, where they find only a Ruined Earth, determines them to return to the island and cultivate their ...
Mano, D Keith
(1942-2016) US actor, author and playwright whose energetic novels confronted Christians (he was himself a Russian Orthodox Christian) with various moral and physical dilemmas. His second novel, Horn (1969), is a transcendental fable; his third, War Is Heaven! (1970), describes with some surreal vividness a Future War in an imaginary – but easily imagined – South American country. The Bridge (1973) is a ...
Samuel, Horace B
(1883-1950) UK lawyer, translator and author, in active service during World War One, whose Modernities (coll 1913) contains vivid studies of contemporary literary figures; in his Scientific Romance The Quisto-Box (1925), the consequences of the Invention of the "Telepathoscope", a mind-reading Machine, are ...
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 ...