SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 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 7 July 2025
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Robinson, Spider
(1948- ) US-born author, in Canada from 1973 (a citizen from 2002); married to Jeanne Robinson from 1975 until her death in 2010. His first story, "The Guy with the Eyes" in Analog for February 1973, inaugurated the long-running Callahan series of Club Stories, which continued into the twenty-first century. He has sometimes written tales as by B D Wyatt. The first few ...
Gutierrez, Alan
(1958- ) American artist. After graduating from Pasadena's Art Center College of Design in 1982 with a BFA in Illustration, Gutierrez quickly entered the field of sf Illustration with a cover for the May 1983 issue of Fantasy Book depicting a Tyrannosaurus rex surrounded by cowboys. He then began painting covers for Tor Books which often ...
"Noname"
A House Name for the Frank Tousey publishing firm, used in the late nineteenth century for boys' fiction in several genres, including mysteries and Westerns as well as sf. Of most sf interest were the Frank Reade, Jr. tales (see Frank Reade Library; Luis Senarens) and the slightly later Jack Wright tales (see Luis ...
Bubble E Go! Time Machine Wa Drum-Shiki
["To the Bubble! The Time Machine Is a Washing Machine"] Film (2007 Japan; vt Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust). Aries, Hoichoi, Tōhō. Directed by Yasuo Baba. Written by Ryōichi Kimizuka. Cast includes Hiroshi Abe, Ryōko Hirosue and Hiroko Yakushimaru. 116 minutes. Colour. / With the yen on the verge of collapse (see Money), the Japanese government identifies the root of its troubles as a piece of fictional legislation in 1990 that ...
Black Cat, The
US short-story magazine founded in Boston by Herman D Umbstaetter (1851-1913) in October 1895. Umbstaetter remained its publisher, under the Short Story Publishing Co imprint, and editor until the September 1912 issue when his health forced him to sell the magazine to Samuel E Cassino (1856-1937) who ran it with his son, Herman, until 1919. Theresa E Dyer (1872-1967), who had been Umbstaetter's assistant, continued to edit the magazine, but when Cassino transferred the magazine to Salem, MA, ...
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 ...