SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Lichtman, Robert
(1942-2022) US fan editor and publisher, active in Fandom since the late 1950s; a contributor to various amateur press associations (see APA) including FAPA, OMPA and SAPS; married to Carol Carr from 2000 until her death in 2021. He published many Fanzines from 1959 [see Fancyclopedia 3 under links ...
Green, Edwin
(? -? ) US author, possibly pseudonymous, known only for the Goliath series comprising Air Monster (1932) and Secret Flight (1933), marginally Near Future aviation tales for children (see Airship Boys) featuring a giant zeppelin described in terms just in advance of contemporary Technology. In the first tale, the Goliath rescues the ...
Lustbader, Eric Van
(1946- ) US author who graduated from Columbia University, majoring in sociology, and worked for a time in the rock-music industry; married since 1982 to Victoria Schochet. Although "Van" is a middle name rather than part of his surname, he is frequently shelved under V in bookshops and libraries; he has also appeared as Eric Lustbader, a decision of the publishers rather than the author. His published sf/fantasy work began with the ...
Brust, Steven
(1955- ) Hungarian-descended US author, almost exclusively of Fantasy, notably the long Vlad Taltos series and the swashbuckling Alexandre Dumas-like Khaavren Romances set earlier in the same universe. He is mentioned here chiefly for Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille (1990), an intermittently comic spoof about a saloon which dodges atomic ...
Hogan, James P
(1941-2010) UK-born systems-design engineer and author, in the USA from 1977 and latterly in Ireland; he was a full-time author from 1979. His first novel (and first publication), Inherit the Stars (1977), aroused interest for the exhilarating sense it conveys of scientific minds at work on real problems and for the genuinely exciting scope of the sf imagination it deploys. The book turned out to be the first volume in the Minervan Experiment/Giants sequence, being followed ...
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 ...