SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Peterson, John Victor
(? - ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Martyrs Don't Mind Dying" in Astounding for January 1938, producing competent Genre SF for various contemporary SF Magazines until 1959. With Allen Ingvald Benson he published "Atmospherics" (September 1939 Astounding) under the joint pseudonym Victor Valding. In his one ...
Marshall, Edison
(1894-1967) US author and big-game hunter, in active service during World War One; best known for his work outside the sf field, especially his many historical novels, though he began publishing sf early in his career with "Who is Charles Avison?" (April 1916 Argosy), an early Counter-Earth tale; the From a Frontiersman's Diary series (August 1919-January 1920 ...
Chan Koonchung
(1952- ) Chinese author, editor, journalist, screenwriter and producer, sometimes billed as John Koon or John Chan, a key figure in the modern history of many media in Chinese, but known in the sf genre for a single work. Born in Shanghai but raised in Hong Kong, he completed his education in Boston before returning to Hong Kong in 1976 as the founding editor of Hao Wai ["City Magazine"]. He wrote and produced several films since the ...
McNeil, Everett
(1862-1929) US scenario creator for silents (mostly Westerns) and author of adventure tales for boys, including two Lost Race adventures, The Lost Treasure Cave; Or, Adventures with the Cowboys of Colorado (1905), in which the Indians the cowboys must deal with are in fact Aztecs; and the more fully developed The Lost Nation (1918), set in Underground venues haunted by apemen ...
Telekinesis
An important item of sf Terminology, from the Greek words for "movement at a distance". Thus telekinesis is the ability to move objects by the power of the mind, which after Telepathy is the most commonly used Psi Power in sf. The word was not coined by an sf author: the Oxford English Dictionary gives an 1890 citation from Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. It appeared in ...
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 ...