SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 8 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 3 February 2025
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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Psychotronic Video
US letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on newsprint. Publisher and Editor Michael J Weldon. 41 issues from 1989 to 2006; quarterly publication schedule. / Following his early-1980s Fanzine entitled Psychotronic TV, publisher Weldon revived the publication in 1989 as a Semiprozine, gaining significant bookshop distribution. The focus was on films and, though to a lesser degree, ...
London, Jack
Working name of US author John Griffith London (1876-1916), known primarily for his work outside the sf field. After leaving school at the age of 14, London spent seven years of adventure and hardship as an oyster pirate, sailor, hobo, prisoner and Klondike gold-seeker. During this period, he gave himself an education steeped in the most influential scientific and philosophic theories of the late nineteenth century – Darwinism (see Evolution; ...
Howey, Hugh
(1975- ) US author who has become very well known for his successful use of a self-publishing model to create a market for his fiction, though his first work – the Bern Saga sequence beginning with Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue (2009) – was released traditionally, fittingly as regards its deliberately traditional Young Adult content. A young female space cadet finds herself travelling the interstellar ...
Kipling, Rudyard
(1865-1936) UK journalist, poet and author known mainly for such works outside the sf field as Plain Tales from the Hills (coll 1888) – which does contain some supernatural tales – and Kim (1901) [see below]; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. During World War One, a conflict he had named "The Great War" as early as 1899, he wrote a great deal of propaganda, but the loss of his ...
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 ...