SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 5 September 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 31 August 2026
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Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Eco, Umberto
(1932-2016) Italian academic and author active from the mid-1950s, famed for his work in history, philosophy, literary criticism and semiotics. His adult novels are not explicitly sf, the closest he came to the genre being in two children's books, La bomba e il generale (1966 chap; trans William Weaver as The Bomb and the General 1989 chap) and I tre cosmonauti (1966 chap; trans William ...
Wendland, Albert
(1948- ) US academic and author whose first book, Science, Myth, and the Fictional Creation of Alien Worlds (1984), expands his 1979 doctoral thesis; his interest in the imaginative processes involved in shaping Alien environments informs his first novel, The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes (1984), a Space Opera whose protagonist, threatened by the murder of several colleagues, embarks ...
Drachman, Theodore S
(1904-1988) US doctor, epidemiologist and public health official whose sf novel Cry Plague! (1953 dos) deals with the efforts of Medicine to control Pandemics which are feared to result from germ warfare. Though unremarkable, this publication is of historical and Bibliographical interest as the first science-fictional segment of an Ace Double (see Ace Books; ...
Koster, Raph
(1971- ) US Game designer who has primarily worked on persistent Online Worlds. Koster's first major contributions were made to the free-to-play Heroic Fantasy Multi User Dungeon LegendMUD (1994 Mainframe, Net), of which he was one of the designers. He was later hired as lead designer for Ultima Online (1997), ...
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 ...