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 ...
McDonough, Thomas R
(1945- ) US author and lecturer in engineering at Caltech, perhaps best known for his nonfiction and for serving as the coordinator of the SETI programme of the Planetary Society. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Listening for Life in the Cosmos (1987) argues the case for seeking out First Contact with other races in the Galaxy; that there have been no successes to report over the past ...
WSFA Journal
US club Fanzine, first series 1965-1977 edited by Don Miller; second series, following a hiatus, 1988-current under various editors. US quarto (letter-size) format. Published for the Washington SF Association based in Washington, District of Columbia. / Besides items relating to WSFA and local Fandom, the WSFA Journal contained articles of general sf interest, including in its early years a regular column by Thomas Burnett ...
Lugosi, Bela
Working name of Hungarian-born Horror actor Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (1882-1956), in the US from 1920, who became a US citizen in 1931. He first achieved fame with his title role in the 1927 Broadway stage version of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), leading to his star part in the Universal Pictures Dracula (1931) directed by Tod Browning. In non- ...
Brant, John Ira
(1872-1959) US inventor and author whose The New Regime: A. D. 2202 (1909) bases its vision of an international Utopia on the work of Edward Bellamy. Unusually, the "visitor" to this utopia is not a Sleeper Awakes figure but a contemporary man who has given himself Amnesia through Drug use, and must be reintroduced to his happy ...
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 ...