SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 11 July 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.
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Stoddard, William O
(1835-1925) US editor, government official, inventor and author, Abraham Lincoln's Assistant Private Secretary 1861-1864, resigning for health reasons which also truncated his slightly later career as a United States Marshall in Arkansas. His patents were in the field of publishing. He began to publish fiction in 1869, producing in the end more than 100 volumes, mostly for young readers. Those of sf interest include two Lost Race novels: ...
Benton, Mike
(? - ) US Comics authority who wrote the Taylor History of Comics nonfiction series for the Taylor Publishing Company in the 1990s. Though some are relatively brief at 144-150pp, these heavily illustrated works contain considerable information on the history of the various genres and creators of comics in the US during most of the twentieth century. Horror Comics: The Illustrated History (1991) and ...
Starship Troopers
Film (1997). TriStar Pictures and Touchstone Pictures (see The Walt Disney Company) present a Jon Davison production. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Written by Ed Neumeier based on Starship Troopers (October-November 1959 F&SF as "Starship Soldier"; 1959) by Robert A Heinlein. Cast includes Clancy Brown, Jake Busey, Casper Van Dien, ...
Nines, The
Film (2007). Destination Films/Jinks-Cohen Company. Written and directed by John August. Cast includes Hope Davis, Elle Fanning, Melissa McCarthy, Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer. 100 minutes. Colour. / Perturbations in reality intrude on an actor, a television showrunner, and a Videogame auteur (all Reynolds), whose worlds interlock without overlapping; all three Identities are revealed as ...
Kowal, Mary Robinette
(1969- ) US professional puppeteer and author, initially known for her series of Jane Austen-inflected fantasies beginning with Shades of Milk and Honey (2010); see Checklist below for full listing. She has also written short fiction, some of it sf. Her first published story of genre interest was "Just Right" for The First Line in 2005; early short fiction was collected in Scenting the Dark and Other Stories (coll 2009). Kowal received ...
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 ...