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Saturday 12 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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Alexander, Robert
(? - ) UK author of The Pendulum of Fate: Cosmic Glimpses of Past & Future (coll 1933), a collection of short stories which examine various aspects of Time. [JE]
Colossus of New York, The
Film (1958). William Alland Productions/Paramount. Directed by Eugène Lourié. Written by Thelma Schnee, based on a story by Willis Goldbeck. Cast includes John Baragrey, Charles Herbert, Otto Kruger, Ross Martin, Mala Powers and Ed Wolff. 70 minutes. Black and white. / A curious little film about a man, Jeremy Spensser (Martin), who is killed in an accident and whose brain – briefly preserved as a Brain in a Box – is ...
Pattison, Eliot
(1951- ) US author most of whose fiction consists of thrillers in the Inspector Shan sequence. Ashes of Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America (2011), is set in a Post-Holocaust America twenty-five years after the country has been devastated by international terrorism. An original founder of the village of Carthage – now a harsh pocket Dystopia in which knowledge of the ...
Loch Ness Monster
Scotland's mythical Loch Ness Monster – so called since 1933 and gaining international fame soon after, is generally explained in sf as a surviving aquatic Dinosaur or dinosaur colony, as in William J Makin's "The Monster of the Loch" (20 January-3 March 1934 Pearson's Weekly) with Leslie Arliss (1901-1987); Leslie ...
Collier's Weekly
US news and general interest magazine, noted early in its existence for its investigative journalism; counted as one of the Slicks although for most of its run it was in tabloid format. It was founded by the Irish immigrant Peter Fenelon Collier (1849-1909) as Collier's Once A Week from 28 April 1888, edited by fellow Irishman Nugent Robinson. It became Collier's Weekly in 1895 and simply Collier's from 1905. It remained weekly to 25 July 1953, ...
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 ...