SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 July 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 13 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Wager, Walter
(1924-2004) US crime and spy-thriller author who also wrote as John Tiger and (his first and second names) Walter Herman. His borderline-sf political suspense thriller Viper Three (1971), in which escaped prisoners take over a US nuclear missile silo and blackmail the government with threats of a launch that will trigger World War Three, was adapted for Cinema with a somewhat different slant and ending as ...
Maelstrom Speculative Fiction
US low-paying Print Magazine published and edited by David L Felts, Palm Harbor, Florida. It ran for eight issues from Summer 1998 to October 2001, and was in a slim (usually between 28 and 32 pages) large review size (see Magazines) format. Like many Amateur Magazines that emerged in the 1990s, the editor wanted to publish material that was out of the ordinary and would make the reader ...
Elliott, George P
(1918-1980) US academic and author, many of whose short stories were sf or fantasy, the first of genre interest being "The Hill" in Pacific for February 1948. He is best remembered for "Among the Dangs" (June 1958 Esquire), assembled in Among the Dangs: Ten Short Stories (coll 1960), which deals with an imaginary South American tribe and has been widely reprinted within and outside the genre; his essay "Discovering the Dangs", in ...
Ares
US sf Wargames magazine published by Simulations Publications Inc (SPI) from issue #1 (March 1980) to #12 (January 1982) with Redmond A Simonsen as editor; thereafter by Dragon Publishing, edited by Michael Moore from #12 (January 1982) to #14 (Spring 1983) and by Kim Mohan from #15 (Fall 1983) to #17 (Spring 1984). The schedule was bimonthly to #12 and thereafter quarterly. Seventeen issues plus ...
Kurland, Michael
(1938- ) US author who began publishing sf in September 1964 with "Elementary" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with Laurence M Janifer, and Ten Years to Doomsday (1964) with Chester Anderson. The latter is a lightly written alien-Invasion novel, full of harmless violence in space, in which a planetary society ...
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 ...