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Thursday 11 December 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 11 December 2025
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Varley, John
(1947-2025) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Picnic on Nearside" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1974, and who was soon thought to be the most significant new sf writer of the late 1970s. He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments like cloning (see Clones) and Identity Transfer, many of ...
World, the Flesh and the Devil, The
Film (1959). HarbelProductions/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Directed by Ranald MacDougall. Written by Ferdinand Reyher and MacDougall, nominally based on The Purple Cloud (1901) by M P Shiel. Cast includes Harry Belafonte, Mel Ferrer and Inger Stevens. 95 minutes. Black and white. / Ralph Burton (Belafonte), an African-American mine inspector, is trapped Underground by a cave-in. He can hear rescuers attempting to ...
Leisner, William
(? - ) US author of Ties to the Star Trek universe, beginning with Star Trek: The Next Generation: Losing the Peace (2009), which deals with the aftermath of a Borg assault upon civilization; he has also contributed to anthologies set in this universe. [JC]
Boyd, John
Pseudonym of Boyd Bradfield Upchurch (1919-2013), US sf author employed 1947-1971 as a production manager and salesman for the Star Engraving Company, and active in the sf field for a decade following publication of his first novel, The Last Starship From Earth (1968), during which period he published thirteen novels and just one short sf story, "The Girl and the Dolphin" (March 1973 Galaxy) (see Dolphins). ...
Magazines
A term usually applied to periodicals, with the implication that they appear in the form of individual issues at regular or irregular periods, most commonly monthly, as distinct from books which, unless part of a series, are usually one-off publications. However, Anthologies, especially Original Anthologies, can also appear at intervals, though rarely monthly; and though some anthology series, such as ...
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 ...