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Friday 29 September 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 25 September 2023
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Caraker, Mary
(1929- ) US author of whom relatively little is known; she is of Finnish descent and began to publish sf when she was nearing 50, with "The Vampires who Loved Beowulf" in Analog for January 1983, a story which makes up part of her first novel, Seven Worlds (fixup 1986), whose protagonist, a tough female Space Exploratory Forces agent named Morgan Faraday, is entrusted with the task of improving ...
Scott-Moncrieff, D
(1907-1987) UK vintage car restorer and author, who hyphenated his surname for his books, which included some nonfiction. In Not for the Squeamish (coll 1948), the first of his two volumes of stories, of direct sf interest is "Count Szolnok's Robots", in which Robots are terminally evil, with several other tales edge into the realms of Gothic SF; his second collection, The Vaivaisukko's Bride (coll 1949 ...
Moeri, Louise
(1924- ) US author mostly for children's and Young Adult markets, beginning with a fantasy for younger children, Star Mother's Youngest Child (1975 chap); of sf interest is Downwind (1984), a Near Future tale recounting the effects of a nuclear Disaster on a family attempting to escape fallout. [JC]
Lesser, Milton
(1928-2008) US author, more recently the writer of many crime novels and a few sf stories under the name he took legally in the 1950s, Stephen Marlowe. His sf mostly appeared in the Ziff-Davis magazines, including his first story, "All Heroes Are Hated!" for Amazing in November 1950 (as All Heroes Are Hated 2015 dos), but he had been an active fan for some years before that. His other pseudonyms for sf included Adam ...
Pickersgill, Greg
(1951- ) UK fan and critic, a former civil servant, who began to publish work of genre interest with reviews for Vector in 1968. His early Fanzines – Fouler (six issues 1970-1972, numbered 2 to 7) edited with Leroy Kettle, the solo Ritblat (two issues 1974), and Stop Breaking Down (seven issues 1976-1981) edited with Simone Walsh – were central to 1970s ...
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 ...