SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
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 ...
Banks, Michael A
Pseudonym of US author and editor Alan Gould (1951-2023), long active in Cincinnati Fandom, who began publishing sf as Banks with "Lost & Found" with George Wagner in Asimov's for March/April 1978, and who has since published at least forty-five stories, some as Alan Gould. His first books of sf interest were the nonfiction Understanding Science Fiction (1982), a primer with examples – mostly his own stories – ...
X-Men '97
US animated series (2024-current). Marvel Animation. Based on the X-Men created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee for Marvel Comics; this series created by Beau DeMayo. Directed by Jake Castorena, Chase Conley and Emi Yonemura. Writers include Beau DeMayo, Charley Feldman and Anthony Sellitti. Voice cast includes Eric Bauza, George Buza, Chris Britton, Ray Chase, Todd ...
Ion Drive
A common item of sf Terminology derived from a long only theoretical means of Rocket propulsion proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1911. Chemically fuelled rockets are hampered by the necessity of carrying large burdens of fuel. Other systems, including the ion drive, propose using much lighter fuels, compensating for the decrease in the mass available for propulsion by ejecting it at ...
Geoffroy, Louis
Working name of French author Louis-Napoleon Geoffroy-Chateau (1803-1858), whose Napoléon et la conquête du monde, 1812-1832: Histoire de la monarchie universalle (1836; rev vt Napoléon Apocryphe: Histoire de la conquête du monde et de la monarchie universalle 1841; trans as Napoléon and the Conquest of the World 1812-1832: A Fictional History 1994) is an early – perhaps the first genuine – ...
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 ...