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Tuesday 18 February 2025
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 17 February 2025
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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Alternative 3
UK tv pseudo-documentary (1977). Anglia TV. Directed by Christopher Miles; devised and written by David Ambrose. Cast includes Tim Brinton, Carol Hazell, Gregory Munroe. 56 minutes. Colour. / Presented as an ITV "Science Report" on 22 June 1977, this exercise in sf Paranoia fronted by UK news anchor Brinton was meant as an April Fool's Day hoax but was delayed by industrial action. The premise of the "exposé" is ...
Smith, Robert Charles
(1938- ) UK author, prolific in various genres under several pseudonyms, including Roger C Brandon, Robert Charles and Charles Leader. A Clash of Hawks (1975) as Robert Charles depicts a Near Future conflict between Israel and the Arab world; Flowers of Evil (1981) as by Robert Charles is horror; and Nightworld (1984; vt The Comet 1985), also as by Charles, is an expertly told but ...
Dixon, Roger
(1930-1983) UK accountant and author whose epic adventure about humankind's future fate, Noah II (1970; rev 1975), is based on a story idea by Dixon and his agent, Basil Bova, and began the aborted Quest series. A second novel, The Cain Factor (1975) as by Charles Lewis, mixes Sex and apocalypse as a man and a woman escape a Post-Holocaust Earth to become the ...
Wilkins, Vaughan
(1890-1959) UK journalist and author, in active service during World War One, best known for historical romances like And So – Victoria (1937; rev 1956), but who wrote some tales of sf interest. Being Met Together (1944; vt Napoleon's Submarine 1972), though marginal, interestingly describes an attempt to rescue Napoleon from St Helena using a submarine (see Under the Sea) ...
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 ...