SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 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 16 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Anderson, Karen
Working name of US author and fan June Millichamp "Karen" Kruse Anderson (1932-2018), married to Poul Anderson from 1953 until his death in 2001, and with whom – after some poetry – she published her first work of genre interest, Innocent at Large (vt "The Innocent Arrival" in Space, Time & Crime, anth 1964, ed Miriam Allen deFord; 2016 ebook), in ...
Fantasy Enterprises
US letter-size perfect-bound Media Magazine printed on middle-grade paper. Publisher: Psi Fi Movie Press. Editors: John Peel (UK), Bob Strauss (US) and James Van Hise. Apparently one issue only, Winter 1986. Intended publication schedule: quarterly. / A quasi-official companion to SF Movieland and SF TV, this short-lived title ran episode guides and Interviews with such notables as ...
Purkey, Ruth Angell
(? - ) US playwright, two of whose several dramas are of some sf interest. Hangs Over my Head (first performed 1956; in The Best Short Plays of 1955-56, anth 1956) is set just before an increasingly likely World War Three; a cast rehearsing a play, lacking any script to deal with their private and public dramas, accost a Mysterious Stranger in search of a ...
Quick, Dorothy
(1896-1962) US playwright, poet and author who began publishing in very early adulthood, her first story of genre interest seeming to be "An Italian Night" in the US Pearson's Magazine for January 1924; most of her work was Fantasy or Horror. Of sf interest is Strange Awakening (1938), a Planetary Romance whose protagonist, transferred to ...
Tunnel, Der
Film (1933). Vandor Film/Bavaria Film. Directed by Kurt Bernhardt. Written by Bernhardt, Reinhart Steinbicker, based on Der Tunnel (1913; trans 1915) by Bernhard Kellermann. Cast includes Elga Brink, Gustaf Gründgens, Paul Hartmann, Attila Hörbiger and Olly von Flint. 80 minutes (French version 73 minutes). Black and white. / This ambitious German film tells of a Near-Future attempt ...
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 ...