SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 7 December 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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Rousseau, Victor
Working name of UK-born author Avigdor Rousseau Emanuel (1879-1960), who also used the pseudonym H M Egbert on his sf, though not exclusively, and signed as V R Emanuel for other work; born of a Jewish father and a French mother – as Sam Moskowitz writes in Under the Moons of Mars (anth 1970) – he lived more and more in the USA after his first arrival in 1901, with periods back in the UK, and in Canada 1912-1916, when much of his ...
Park, Ed
(1970- ) US editor, teacher, journalist and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Well-Moistened with Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of their Absent Sweethearts" in Trampoline (anth 2003) edited by Kelly Link; for the Los Angeles Times he wrote an sf column, Astral Weeks, between 2007 and 2011. The Satire of corporate office life in his first novel Personal Days (2008) is ...
Hand, Elizabeth
(1957- ) US critic and author, partner of Richard Grant from 1988 to 1996, from 1996 partner of John Clute; she began publishing work of genre interest with "Prince of Flowers" in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine for February 1988. Her continuing output of short stories has won acclaim and some awards – "Last Summer at Mars Hill" ...
Greenleaf, William
(1948- ) US author, not to be confused with the William Greenleaf (1917-1975) whose works are in the field of economics; Greenleaf began publishing sf with his first novel, Timejumper (1980), an adventure incorporating an unusually subtle presentation of the rite of passage – the empowering journey of the protagonist towards a culture-redeeming Conceptual Breakthrough – central to the sf genre. 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 ...