SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 15 May 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 12 May 2025
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Universe Pathways
English edition of the Greek magazine Symbandikes Diadromes, published by Maria Trigoni, and edited by George Sotirhos with the assistance of Pavlos Gastaris, Anthippe Fiamou and Nektarios Chrisos. The Greek edition was quarterly and ran for ten issues from Fall 2005 to Winter (December) 2007. The English-language edition had five issues from January 2006 to March 2007. It was originally going to consist of two quarterly Greek editions, combined, translated and released as a ...
Roberts, Tony
Working name of British artist Anthony Roberts (1950- ), occasionally bylined thus but more often credited as Tony Roberts. After receiving artistic training at Wolverhampton College of Art from 1967 to 1969, and at Ravensbourne College of Art from 1969 to 1972, he almost immediately began painting sf book covers. While his first two covers – for a 1973 edition of Ralph Blum's The Simultaneous Man (1970) and a 1973 ...
de Sorr, Angelo
Pseudonym of French author Ludovic Sclafer (1822-1881), whose Le Vampire (1852; trans Brian Stableford as The Vampires of London 2014) expressly shows the influence of John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819 chap) and of the various French versions and mutations of that focal tale. De Sorr uses the Vampire topos as a tool with which to skewer French ...
Vortex Science Fiction
US Digest-size magazine, two issues, May and October 1953, published by Specific Fiction Corp, New York; edited by Chester Whitehorn. Vortex was designed to showcase a large number of very short stories in each issue, achieving this goal in #2, but the idea did not prove popular. However, not all of the nine new writers who made their debut in the second issue were doomed to remain unknown: Marion Zimmer Bradley had ...
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 ...