SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 8 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
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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 ...
Metaphysical Review, The
Australian Fanzine (1984-1998) edited, published, and written by Bruce Gillespie for Melbourne, Victoria. 29 issues. American quarto (letter-size) duplicated from #1 (July 1984) to #10 (March 1987); A4 photo-offset from #11/12/13 (November 1987) to #28/29 (August 1998). Average length 40pp to #10; 80pp thereafter. / Though Gillespie first used the title for 1969-1972 APA ...
Mercier, Lewis Page
(1820-1875) UK minister, schoolmaster and translator, signing as Mercier Lewis and Louis Mercier; it has been surmised that a combination of career and financial difficulties forced him into the translation trade, and these pressures plus ill health may explain the occasional shoddiness of (and frequent cuts to) his translations of Jules Verne novels; the frequency with which they were reprinted remains anomalous. The degree to which his translations were ...
Bogdanov, Alexander
Pseudonym of Russian philosopher, physician, revolutionary figure, and author Alexander Alexandrovich Malinovsky (1873-1928), a leading member of the Bolshevik party 1903-1909, more radical than his ultimately successful rival, Vladimir Lenin, and the author of a vast treatise, Empiriomonizm: Stat'i po Filosofii ["Empiriomonism: Articles on Philosophy"] (1904-1906 3vols), in which he attempted to ground Marxism in contemporary philosophy. After his expulsion from the party ...
Montague, Charles Howard
(1858-1889) US editor, journalist and author whose Two Strokes of the Bell: A Strange Story (1886) deals melodramatically with Amnesia in a supernatural frame. Of more sf interest is The Doctor's Mistake: Or What Myrta Saw: An Experiment with a Life (1888) with Clement Milton Hammond, where a complexly melodramatic plot – at least one Reincarnation seems to ...
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 ...