SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 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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Mason, Colin
(1926-2020) New Zealand-born Australian journalist, politician – Senator for New South Wales 1977-1987 – and author whose Near Future sf novel, Hostage (23 July-3 August 1973 Melbourne Sun; 1973), sets the beginning of World War Three in Israel and its climax in Australia. The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe (2003; rev vt ...
Coates, Robert M
(1897-1973) US author, primarily associated throughout his career with The New Yorker, for which he worked, and to which he contributed many stories. He is mainly of interest to the sf field for his first novel, The Eater of Darkness (1926; rev 1929), which, written before he had fully assimilated the sometimes restrictive urbanity of The New Yorker style, quite brilliantly applies a wide arsenal of literary devices and references, some of the more nihilistic ...
Cawdron, Peter
(1967- ) New Zealand-born author, in Australia for many years, whose early novels, beginning with The Road to Hell (2011 ebook), seem usually to have been self-published until the teens of the twenty-first century, most of his stories being Space Operas heavy on action, often involving First Contact. An early example, Anomaly (2011), which is set on Earth, involves the arrival ...
Cockroft, W P
(1909-1992) UK author who began publishing work of genre interest with They Came from Mars (28 April 1934 Scoops as "Cataclysm", anon; circa 1945 chap), which with its sequel, "City of Mars" (16 June 1934 Scoops), depicts an Earth prostrated by a Martian plague, the destruction of London, and the eventual accommodation between the two races. [JC] see also: ...
Tolan, Stephanie S
(1942- ) US author, almost exclusively of fiction for younger children and Young Adults. In a prolific career she has written relatively little sf. After a supernatural fantasy, Who's There? (1994), she began the Ark Trilogy, comprising to date Welcome to the Ark (1996) and Flight of the Raven (2001), initially set in an isolated Keep known as the "Ark", whose ...
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 ...