SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 29 September 2023
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 25 September 2023
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Captain America
1. Comics character – a patriotic American Superhero whose costume design includes stars and stripes – created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon in Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) for Timely Comics, later Marvel Comics. This title ceased in 1950; the character was briefly but unsuccessfully revived by Atlas Comics in 1953-1954; Marvel ...
Donnell, A J
(1905-1991) US jazz drummer, advertising manager and illustrator who served in the US Army during World War Two; while there are reports that he did some uncredited interior illustrations for Startling Stories during the late 1930s and 1940s, Donnell is otherwise known exclusively as the one of the four founders of the small press Fantasy Press. For three years, he worked as the company's ...
Lanchester, John
(1962- ) German-born journalist and author, in UK from 1972, most of whose fiction has been nonfantastic, though his first novel, The Debt to Pleasure (1996), comes close to regions of Fantastika as its gourmet protagonist travels through a surreal France, arriving at what he claims to be his home, which he immediately weaponizes. Capital (2012) is a nonfantastic anatomy of London and ...
Twohy, David
(1955- ) US filmmaker, sometimes credited as David N Twohy or D T [sic] Twohy, best known for the Riddick series Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), and The Chronicles of Riddick: Dead Man Stalking (2013), and as one of the two writers actually credited on Waterworld (1995). He also wrote ...
Hjortsberg, William
(1941-2017) US screenwriter and author, much of whose work – like his first novel, Alp (1969), or his third, Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974) – hovers Equipoisally between a mildly gonzo Western American Magic Realism and genuine Fabulation. Gray Matters (1971), which is sf, grounds its fantastic episodes in a future Utopia where people are reborn (see ...
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 ...