SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 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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Feeley, Gregory
(1955- ) US critic and author whose essays and book reviews have appeared from the 1980s in various journals from the Washington Post to Foundation. Sometimes adversarial, unfailingly intelligent, they represent a cold-eyed view of a genre he loves by a critic immersed in its material; not always justly, he has been accused of a tendency to hector. Although he began publishing sf with "The Light at the ...
UFOs
A common item of Terminology, both inside and outside sf: UFO is an acronym for Unidentified Flying Object. In the first edition of this encyclopedia in 1979, the subject of ufology was discussed under the heading "Flying Saucers". The change of title reflects the fact that ufology itself has changed over subsequent decades, and may now be thought of almost as three separate disciplines or interpretations of the phenomenon, one of which (the extraterrestrial ...
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
(1797-1851) UK author, daughter of the philosopher and novelist William Godwin (1756-1836) [for entry on Godwin, see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], and of the feminist and educationist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) (see Feminism), who died eleven days after giving birth to her. Shelley married Percy Bysshe Shelley on 30 December 1816, two years ...
Roberts, Tansy Rayner
(1978- ) Australian fan (see Fandom) and Fanzine writer, and author, winning Hugo awards in 2013 and 2015 for her fan accomplishments; her fiction is almost exclusively fantasy [not listed below]. Of sf interest is the Young Adult Musketeer Space (2017), a Space Opera specifically ...
Checkpoint
UK Fanzine (1971-1979) whose founding and principal editor was Peter Roberts (1950- ). This Newszine for the UK sf fan community was launched as a replacement for the 1959-1971 Skyrack. A short-lived "first series" of Checkpoint had appeared in 1968-1969, comprising eight foolscap (13 x 8 in) issues devoted to fanzine reviews. The main newsletter sequence began with the trial ...
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 ...