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Saturday 15 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 ...
Schuette, H George
(1850-1935) US author of Athonia; Or, the Original Four Hundred (1910; possible rev 1911), in which a series of pre-Columbian Utopias are described within a Club Story format, each of them being deemed a failure, though one Lost Race seems promising. The Grand Mysterious Secret Marriage Temple (1931) promulgates a society based on Eugenics. ...
Nau, John-Antoine
Pseudonym of US-born poet and author Eugène Léon Édouard Torquet (1860-1918), in France from 1866, his life from this point until his death being unusually peripatetic. His only published novel, La Force Ennemie (1903; trans Michael Shreve as Enemy Force 2010), which won the first Prix Goncourt in 1903, is of sf interest. Embedding its central premise in a jungle-jim of imagery from the surreal edge of Fantastika, ...
Morris, Janet E
(1946-2024) US defence specialist and author who gained some note as bass player 1972-1975 in the band named after her husband, Chris Morris; he subsequently collaborated with Morris on several sf novels, always as Chris Morris. She herself began writing with the ambitious Silistra sequence, comprising High Couch of Silistra (1977; rev vt Returning Creation 1984), The Golden Sword (1977), ...
Tom Swift
Hero of a Juvenile Series of scientific-invention novels produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, constituting a central example of the importance and persistence of the Edisonade in boys' fiction, and written under the House Name Victor Appleton, most being the work of Howard R Garis. ...
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 ...