SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 14 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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Archer, William
(1856-1924) Scottish critic, translator and playwright, an important reformer of the near-moribund English theatre through his translations of Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), through his critical essays assembled in Masks or Faces? (coll 1888) and elsewhere, and through his alliance with George Bernard Shaw. He is of minor sf interest for a late play, The Green Goddess: A Play in Four Acts (performed Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1920; ...
Michihara Katsumi
(1958- ) Japanese artist of Manga and book covers, best known for her Illustration work on Rieko Yoshihara's erotically-charged novel Ai no Kusabi (October 1987-October 1990 Shōsetsu June; 1990; trans as The Space Between 2007), likely to have been the main impetus behind her ...
Gunn, Neil M
(1891-1973) Scottish author and civil servant who served in various combat-related functions with the Customs and Excise during World War One; author of many novels, the first being Grey Coast (1926). This and some others – like Morning Tide (1931), The Lost Glen (1932), Second Sight (1940) and The Silver Bough (1948) – contain fantasy elements of interest, reminiscent at times ...
Longevity in Writers
It did not yet seem remarkable in 1979, when the first edition of this encyclopedia was released, with many founding authors of Genre SF still in mid career. A few decades later, however, when the second edition appeared in 1993, it seemed appropriate to include an entry on the extreme longevity of some sf and fantasy writers and publications (for magazines and their editors see Longevity in Publications). Three decades ...
Conrad, Joseph
(1857-1924) Polish-born author, in the UK mercantile marine from 1878 to 1894, a UK citizen from 1886, changing his name at that point from Józef Teodor Konrad Naleçz Korzeniowski to Joseph Conrad. For much of his life he laboured under the misprision of his early reputation as a teller of "mere" sea tales; but in later life he gained commercial success, and increasingly after World War Two he received wide attention for the more complex works of his maturity, like Nostromo ...
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 ...