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Saturday 7 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 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
de Gourmont, Remy
(1858-1915) French author, whose early work resembles that of Henri de Régnier, and in whose Une Nuite au Luxembourg (1906; trans Arthur Ransome as A Night in the Luxembourg 1912) a superior Alien, whose people occupy the Outer Planets, visits Earth briefly and engages in an illuminating conversation with some cultured humans. ...
Speculative Fiction
Item of Terminology used by some writers and critics for a period after World War Two in place of Science Fiction. Its first known use is by the reviewer M F Egan in "Book-Talk" (October 1899 Lippincott's Monthly Magazine), which describes Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888) as "speculative fiction". In the symposium published as ...
Ash, Constance
(1950- ) US author of fantasy novels who edited Not of Woman Born (anth 1999), a theme anthology billed as "tales of high-tech reproduction". Walter Jon Williams's contribution "Daddy's World" won a Nebula for best novelette. [DRL]
Greeley, Andrew M
(1928-2013) US Roman Catholic priest, academic in the field of sociology, and author, beginning with nonfiction books about the Roman Catholic Church, which he treated from a liberal standpoint that was congenial to many non-believers; the first of these studies was The Social Effects of Catholic Education (1961). Most of his fiction was not fantastic in nature, though some of his detective novels contain paranormal elements; and he was always more inclined to write ...
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 ...