SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 2026
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 16 February 2026
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Stivers, Carole
(? - ) US biochemist and author The Mother Code (2020), set in a Near Future world devastated by a Pandemic originating as an unintended consequence of experiments in biowarfare, and other Disasters. The planet is so poisoned that the only chance for the survival of Homo sapiens seems to be the implantation of ...
Linton, Dr C E
(1865-1930) US author of The Earthomotor and Other Stories (coll of linked stories 1920), a series of tales involving Transportation with the aid of various Inventions including the eponymous burrower, which carries the cast into a Hollow Earth where a Lost World is discovered whose inhabitants enjoy Immortality; and a ...
Gonzales, Laurence
(1947- ) US author, mostly of nonfiction, including Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why (2003). He is of sf interest for Lucy (2010), an Apes as Human tale whose protagonist discovers after he has adopted the child of a dead colleague in Africa that she is the result of a Eugenic experiment in Genetic Engineering, and that she is ...
Robots
The word "robot" first appeared in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (1920; trans 1923), and is derived from the Czech robota (statute labour), making it clear that Čapek intended his drama to comment on Slavery (see Imperialism), class, race (see Race in SF), and social revolution. What he called robots are artificial human beings of organic ...
King, Harold
(1945-2010) US author whose name has also been wrongly recorded as a joint pseudonym. King concentrates his focus on Technothrillers like Paradigm Red (1975; vt Red Alert 1977), where events – in this case the sabotage of a nuclear facility – hover at the edge of sf. World War III (1982), a Tie novelizing the Television drama, sets the beginning of ...
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 ...