SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 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.
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Space Detective
US Comic (1951-1952). Four issues. Avon Periodicals, Inc (see Avon Comics). Artists include Tex Blaisdell, Gene Fawcette, Joe Orlando and Wally Wood. Writers of scripts include Walter Gibson. Each issue has four comic strips, plus one or two short text stories (except #2). / Wealthy young philanthropist Rod Hathway's hobby is "relieving the miseries of the poor", but he also has a secret identity: ...
Barron, D G
(1922-2000) UK architect and author. In The Zilov Bombs (1962), unilateral UK nuclear disarmament has led to Soviet domination of all Europe (see Politics); after five years (by 1973) the underground is putting pressure on characters like the narrator, who ultimately solves his moral anxieties by detonating one of the eponymous devices, assassinating some Communist tyrants. [JC]
Peyton, Audrey
(? - ) UK author of Ashes (1981), a dark sf tale for Robert Hale Limited which is set in an obscurely described world devastated by Climate Change. [JC]
Watson, Patrick
(1929-2022) Canadian television and radio broadcaster, director and author, active (initially as a child actor on radio) from 1943; his current affairs programme for television, This Hour Has Seven Days (1964-1966), proved too Satirical for the Canadian authorities of that time, and was cancelled for lèse majesté. The resulting scandal intensified the desire of at least one science fiction encyclopedia editor to emigrate. Of his ...
Mines, Samuel
(1909-1998) US editor who worked from 1942 for Standard Magazines, the chain that published Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Although an sf enthusiast – he published four stories in Thrilling Wonder Stories, beginning with "Find the Sculptor" in 1946 – he concentrated mainly editing on non-sf pulps until Sam Merwin Jr left the company in 1951, ...
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 ...