SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 7 February 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 6 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Dark Fantasy
Radio series (1941-1942). The NBC Radio Network. Produced by John J Prosser. Radioplays were by Scott Bishop, pseudonym of George Hamaker (1912-?1996), and Richard Breen. Announcers: Keith Painton, then Tom Paxton. 31 30-minute episodes. / Based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, this Horror and Fantasy series featured some sf during its brief run, and while not well remembered was reportedly of high ...
Ochse, Weston
(1965-2023) US author, married to Yvonne Navarro, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Holy Ghost Hit Parade" in Darkness Within for January 1999. Most of his stories and novels were horror and supernatural thrillers, beginning with Scarecrow Gods (2005), which won a Bram Stoker award for best first novel; and including the SEAL Team 666 sequence opening with SEAL Team 666 (2012), about an elite government ...
Chambers, John
(1922-2001) US makeup artist and medical technician. Chambers first began to learn such techniques performing reconstructive surgery and designing prosthetic limbs for wounded soldiers while serving in World War Two. Chambers is of most importance to sf for his work on the Alien race the Vulcans featured on the original Star Trek (1966-1969) Television series – for which he moulded Spock's ...
Sweet, Darrell
(1934-2011) American artist, who came to prefer being credited as Darrell K Sweet. As a young adult, Sweet earned a BFA in painting from Syracuse University in 1956 and also served in the military. After working as a freelance artist, including assignments for Reader's Digest, Sweet began painting sf book covers for Ballantine Books in 1974, later shifting to its subsidiary Del Rey Books. From the start, Sweet ...
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 ...