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Sunday 12 April 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 April 2026
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Altebrando, Tara
(? - ) US author of Young Adult titles, who also writes as by Tara McCarthy, most of her work, beginning with The Pursuit of Happiness (2006), being nonfantastic romances. Leaving (2016) contains hints of Horror in SF. The Possible (2017), in which Telekinesis threatens to further rupture an already seriously ...
Stamey, Sara
(1953- ) US author in whose Wild Card Run sequence of sf adventures – Wild Card Run (1987), Win, Lose, Draw (1988) and Double Blind (1990) – a refreshingly tangential attitude towards plotting keeps a young female protagonist with Psi Powers hopscotching from planet to planet. En route she embraces her own tangled family romance on one world, and elsewhere confronts some ...
Osborne, Duffield
(1858-1917) US lawyer and author of The Spell of Ashtaroth (1888), a Biblical fantasy featuring Joshua; of sf interest is The Secret of the Crater (A Mountain Moloch) (July 1897 Lippincott's Magazine as "A Mountain Moloch"; exp 1900), a tale whose frame narrator, after evoking H Rider Haggard and Jules Verne, presents to his readers the illustrative story of an explorer who discovers a ...
Blue Sunshine
Film (1977). Ellanby/Blue Sunshine Co. Written and directed Jeff Lieberman. Cast includes Mark Goddard, Zalman King, Robert Walden and Deborah Winters. 95 minutes. Colour. / Lieberman's first film was a witty (if disgusting) Monster Movie, Squirm (1976) – the last word on killer worms; its novelization was Squirm (1976) by Richard A Curtis. Blue Sunshine, Lieberman's ...
Hardy, David A
(1936- ) UK artist and illustrator, known at least as much for his astronomical and space-exploration paintings, done in the accurate tradition of Chesley Bonestell, as for his sf work. Hardy is essentially a self-taught artist, though he attended the Margaret Street College of Art in Birmingham circa 1960 on day release from his illustration work for the chocolate manufacturer Cadbury, during which employment he honed his ...
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 ...