SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 January 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.
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Willard, Tom
(? - ) US author of Military SF adventures: the Strike Fighters sequence, beginning with Strike Fighters (1990) and ending with Strike Fighters #7: Blood River (1991), which slides occasionally into Technothriller country; and the Afrikorps sequence as by Bill Dolan, beginning with Afrikorps (1991) and ending with Cobra Curse ...
Kummer, Frederic Arnold, Jr
(1913-1990) US author, son of Frederic Arnold Kummer, Sr, who sometimes varied his first name, also spelling it Frederick or Fredric; he published at least one story as by Martin Vaeh. Kummer began to publish work of genre interest with "The Medici Cup" in The Evening Standard Book of Strange Stories (anth 1934), edited anonymously; as an sf author, his career was short, with a few stories before 1939, at least sixteen that year, eighteen ...
Hidden World, The
US Pulp-format magazine, 16 issues, Spring 1961 to Winter 1964, published and edited by Raymond A Palmer. This was a quarterly publication, handling Shaver-Mystery and flying-saucer (see UFOs) material, and purporting to be science fact rather than science fiction. #1 elaborated on the Shaverian "Mantongue" language. Circulation had by the end dropped from 10,000 to ...
Super-Science Fiction
US Digest-size magazine, 18 bimonthly issues December 1956 to October 1959, published by Headline Publications, New York, edited by W W Scott. Super-Science Fiction was a case of simply one magazine too many, coming in the final wave of interest in sf magazines at the end of the 1950s at a time when readers were already turning to the paperback. Scott, who had no experience in science fiction though he was an old-time Pulp magazine ...
Rolls, Brian
(? - ) Author whose single sf novel for Robert Hale Limited is Something in Mind (1973), in which an experimental Drug sends its users on mind-trips through Time and space. [DRL]
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 ...