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Thursday 14 May 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.
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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Donnelly, H Grattan
(1850-1931) Irish-born playwright and author, in US from early manhood; he wrote three sf novels: The Coming Crown (1880 chap), a Satire on tendencies he detected for the American presidency to become a form of monarchy in the Near Future; '84, a Political Revelation (1883 chap), which predicts further postbellum turmoils; and The Stricken Nation (1890 chap), depicting a ...
Meluch, R M
(1956- ) US author whose first novel, Sovereign (1979), shows a competent grasp of the conventions and venues of sf adventure while at the same time refracting traditional material through an unusually complex protagonist, who is the precarious culmination of a Genetic Engineering programme haunted by the continuing image of his first enemy: his own father. There are, perhaps, too many additional enemies for ...
Verba, Joan Marie
(1953- ) US editor and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Gift" in the Darkover Shared World Fanzine Starstone #2 for June 1978, her first professional sale being "Death's Scepter" in Four Moons of Darkover (anth 1988) edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Much of her subsequent work has ...
Casewit, Curtis W
(1922-2002) German-born author, in US from 1948; linguistically fluent, he did military service with the French Army in World War Two, later serving as an interpreter for the British Army. Almost all of his work was nonfiction, much of it about skiing; he began publishing work of genre interest with an sf story, "The Mask", in Weird Tales for March 1952. His sf novel, The Peacemakers (1960), depicts conflicting societies in a virtually depopulated ...
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 ...