SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 24 April 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 21 April 2025
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Margulies, Leo
(1900-1975) US publisher and editor, who joined the Frank A Munsey chain of Pulp magazines in 1932, later moving to Beacon Magazines and becoming editorial director of Thrilling Wonder Stories when Beacon began publishing that title in 1936. Margulies had overall responsibility for the entire output of the chain; this later included the magazines Captain Future, ...
Edge Detector
Canadian Semiprozine, published and edited by Glenn Grant of London, Ontario (for the first two issues; Montreal, Quebec for the third issue) which saw three letter-size issues in Summer 1988, Summer 1989 and Summer 1991, all three computer-typeset. The magazine sought to develop experimental fiction beyond the Cyberpunk revolution and included work by Paul Di Filippo and Rudy ...
Williams, John A
(1925-2015) US academic, poet and author, almost all of whose work reflected his experiences (including service in World War Two) as a Black American. His sf (see Race in SF) is similarly focused. The Man Who Cried I Am (1967) posits a Black genocide plot on the part of the American Government, known as the King Alfred Plan and to be put into action – beginning with mass transfer of Black people into ...
West, Alroy
Pseudonym of UK author Michael Roy Hastings (1907-1980), who was born Herbert Roy Higgins, but normally wrote adventure thrillers as by Michael Hastings, taking that name by deed poll in 1939; he also published some thrillers as by Gabriel Hythe. As West, he wrote at least one tale of some sf interest (and perhaps several); one of these, The Black Matador (1937), describes the effects of the Invention of a device capable of blocking all electronic ...
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 ...