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Sunday 11 October 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.
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Zool, M H
Group pseudonym used by members of the Oxford University Speculative Fiction Group for the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy (1989), a compact and knowledgeable biographical and bibliographical dictionary whose usefulness would have been considerably enhanced had its authors been granted more space. "M H Zool" stands for Massed Hordes of Zool, a recurring phrase found in Time Warriors of Zool (1979) by William Bains, a multi-instalment narrative ...
Soylent Green
Film (1973). MGM. Directed by Richard Fleischer. Written by Stanley R Greenberg, based on Make Room! Make Room! (1966) by Harry Harrison. Cast includes Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten, Charlton Heston, Paula Kelly, Edward G Robinson and Leigh Taylor-Young. 97 minutes. Colour. / A New York police detective (Heston) in a 2022 CE marked by massive Overpopulation investigates what appears to be a routine ...
Winchester, Simon
(1944- ) UK journalist and author, for many years resident in the USA, a citizen of that country from 2011, active as a journalist from the 1960s. He is the author of several nonfiction studies of world politics, many of which edge into Futures Studies territory, including Pacific: The Ocean of the Future (2015), which takes a sharply negative view of Japanese industries. He is of specific sf interest for the ...
Vorhies, John R
(1920-1993) US author in whose Near-Future sf Satire, Pre-Empt (1967; vt The Nathan Hale 1968), a nuclear-submarine captain enforces world peace by dropping a few demonstration missiles on the USA and USSR, generating mockable confusion. Despite the fervent advocacy of right-wingers, America does not in fact opt for a pre-emptive strike. [JC]
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 ...